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FIRST EDITION 
Reprinted 
Reprinted 
Reprinted 

6s. NET EDITION 


February 1901 
July 1901 

. October 1902 
November 1906 
March 1907 


ATONEMENT AND 
PERSONALITY _ 


By KR. C, MOBERLY, D.D. 


LATE CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, REGIUS PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL 


THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 


NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 


1907 


BT 25s 
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ese @e * e« s ee e 8.2/7 
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Printed in Great Britain. 


TO 
THE CHURCH 
ONE HOLY CATHOLIC 
THE BODY OF THE SPIRIT 
OF JESUS CHRIST 
VERY GOD OF VERY GOD 
INCARNATE 
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OF THE WHOLE WORLD 


2816¢7 





PREFACE 


ATONEMENT is a reality much too fundamental to human 
consciousness, to be capable of any ready explanation. 
Our explanations, at their best, are still always partial 
explanations. It is always more than our understanding 
of it. 

From this there follow two direct results. The first is a 
certain duty of what has been called “ reverent agnosticism.” 
Our insight into the doctrine may be adequate. That it 
should be exhaustive is inconceivable. All explanations 
must be given with this reserve. They are not, and never 
can be, the whole truth. There is always more than human 
logic can express, or human imagination conceive. “Quod 
si aliquatenus quaestioni tuze satisfacere potero, certum esse 
debebit, quia et sapientior me plenius hoc facere poterit; 
imo sciendum est, quidquid homo inde dicere vel scire possit, 
altiores tantz rei adhuc latere rationes.”} 

The second result is that human explanations, being all, 
of necessity, aspects which are less than complete, must from 
time to time vary and be re-adjusted. Atonement can, and 
must, become intelligible, to different stages of human 
intellect. It can, and must, express itself in the terms of 
thought of different generations, and to some extent 
different philosophies. 


2 St Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, ch. ii. 


x PREFACE | 


The fact of such historical variations is a witness to the 
stability, not the instability, of the underlying truth. So 
far as the intellectual illustration which meets the needs of 
our own generation may differ from that of our predecessors 
the difference condemns neither us nor them. St Anselm 
may correct, but he does not condemn, those who had gone 
before him. Nordo later theologians condemn St Anselm 
when they show where his explanations will not hold. If 
we differ a good deal from some earlier explanatory theories 
we do not therefore hold that they were all false. On the 
contrary, it is of some importance to insist that in their own 
time, and their own way, they were all true. As real and 
living theories they did represent real aspects of the great 
reality. By their truth they lived. But by the incomplete- 
ness of their truth, or the disproportioned statement of it, 
they in time decayed. 

But if our own explanations in turn have a temporary 
character, if they too will be felt in time to be incomplete, 
or are not free from some strain of disproportion, this does 
not mean that we ought to, or could possibly, live without 
them. On the contrary, explanations are, in each age, in- 
dispensable. Without illustrative explanation we cannot 
apprehend or hold the truth, which it is vital to hold and 
to apprehend ; even though our illustrative explanations be 
none of them in the long run—as they none of them can 
be—fully adequate. It is not only true, on what may be 
called the negative side, that difficulties which are them- 
selves the creation of intellect must be intellectually dis- 
posed of. This is true indeed, and important. And in fact 
the intellectual objections which are felt to the doctrine of 
atonement are all of this character. They are logical 
fictions, which must be answered by logic. And this alone 


PREFACE xi 


would more than justify the intellectual treatment of the 
doctrine in every generation. But besides this more nega- 
tive or apologetic necessity, it is true also positively, in every 
generation, that to be held at all by those who on all 
grounds dutifully wish to hold it, the doctrine must be, 
however incompletely, yet positively and really, apprehended 
by the intellect. We must needs, in each generation, so 
interpret it to ourselves as both to meet and answer intel- 
lectual objections, and also to possess, for our own lives, a 
positive, tangible, and living, conception of the meaning of 
Atonement. 

The following pages would hardly have assumed their 
present shape, if the writer had not been, for his own part, 
convinced of two principles, which it may be worth while 
to mention here. The first is that the difficulties which are 
generally felt about Christian atonement arise neither from 
the Evangelical history of the Cross itself, nor even from 
anything in the original apostolic proclamation of the fact, 
or of the doctrine, of the Cross; but rather from the 
inadequacy of certain more or less current explanations, 
logical and inferential, of the original apostolic doctrine. 
Such inferential structures (the most untrue of which has 
considerable relation to truth) are precisely the things which 
ought to be closely re-examined and reconstructed. They 
are no part of the original tradition. They are practically 
almost unknown in the earliest ages of Christianity. They 
are the work of human intellect, honest, instructive—and 
visibly inadequate. They are stages in the human assimila- 
tion of a truth more fundamental and inclusive than the 
assimilating power of human intellect. It does not take 
any exceptional knowledge of the history of the doctrine, 
especially in the earliest Christian centuries, to detach them 


xii PREFACE 


from the doctrine itself; and, if not fully to correct them, 
at least to see the elements in them which are most 
obviously open to question and correction. Some rather 
fragmentary dealing with the history of the doctrine, suffi- 
cient, as it is hoped, for this particular purpose, has been 
attempted in an appended chapter, which is rather sub- 
sidiary to, than an integral part of, the effort of the present 
volume. 

The second conviction is that, for our minds at least, 
current difficulties about atonement are largely bound up 
with, and inseparable from, current—and questionable— 
conceptions of personality. There are presuppositions 
about personality which have so aggravated the moral 
difficulty as to make it appear to many minds insuperable. 
And it is the correction of such presuppositions about per- 
sonality which will be the natural solution of the difficulties, 
Two principles may be mentioned, which our thought is 
apt to assume; first, that the essentia of personality is 
mutual exclusiveness, or (in vivid metaphor) mutual im- 
penetrability : and the second that (as a corollary from the 
first) what was done by another, being vital in him not in 
us, cannot make an essential contrast of content or character 
within ourselves. Our distinctness from one another, and 
from Christ, regarded as primary, essential and final, and 
exaggerated to a point at which distinctness becomes not 
distinctness only but mutual separation, exclusiveness, in- 
dependence,—perhaps even antithesis: this is a fundamental 
root of much difficulty that is felt, whether consciously or 
unconsciously, upon the whole subject. It is a difficulty 
which has grown up out of the developed assumptions of 
human intellect. It is hardly inherent or original. But is 
the assumption true? Is this really an axiom, involved in 


PREFACE xiii 


self-conscious recognition of personality? The question is 
one which it concerns us, at this particular moment, to point 
out rather than to discuss. It belongs to the following 
chapters to vindicate, if they can, the position that is taken 
about it. For it is upon this that the real argument of the 
volume depends. 

It has seemed therefore only right to give to these pages 
the title “ Atonement and Personality” ; and that, not only 
in order to emphasize the belief that no explanation of atone- 
ment can be adequate which is not, at every point, in terms 
of personality ; but also, and perhaps even more, because it 
seemed to become increasingly clear, on analysis of thought, 
that neither could any explanation of personality be ade- 
quate, which was not, in point of fact, in terms of atone- 
ment. 

If this saying sounds hard or abrupt, we may make it 
perhaps more intelligible by saying that personality cannot 
be explained except in terms of that self-identification of 
the Christian with the Spirit of Christ,—that constitution 
of Christian selfhood by the Spirit of Christ—which is the 
key to the explication of atonement, and without which 
atonement remains incapable, not of being received, indeed, 
but of being explained. But if that which alone makes 
atonement intelligible is itself the explanation of personality ; 
if, in explaining personality, it explains atonement; and 
only by that which is involved in, and expressed as, atone- 
ment, makes its explanation of personality coherent and 
clear ; then it is hardly an audacious mode of speech to say 
that personality is explained in terms of atonement. 

The conception of these pages as a whole is one which, 
as I cannot but believe, needs to be explicitly stated at the 
present time. And I trust they may serve at least to make 


xiv 3 PREFACE 


clear the coherence of the several parts of the conception 
At point after point in the detail of the several parts, I can- 
not but be painfully aware of the inadequacy of what has 
actually been said. But after all it is the conception as a 
whole, it is the relation of the parts of the thought to one 
another, rather than the elaborate completeness of the parts 
in themselves, which will probably constitute the value, if 
any there be, of the present contribution. And it is possible 
that any elaborated attempt to present the several parts in 
more adequate detail, even if it were in any measure success- 
ful, might rather obscure than assist the clear presentment 
of their relation to each other. 

Slight, then, though in many ways the filling in of the 
outline sketch may be, yet, such as it is, I submit it—with, 
as I believe, a real sincerity of submission,—to the con- 
science and judgment of the Church of Christ. 

I greatly regret that the volume on Personality, by the 
Rev. Wilfrid Richmond, did not appear in time for me to 
make any use of it in | my own writing, or at least to 
examine my own writing in the light of it. But the general 
line of Mr Richmond’s thought was not unfamiliar to me; 
and I am conscious that my debt to it is great. He speaks, 
no doubt, as a philosopher to philosophers: and will, in 
that region, be well able to maintain his own position. I 
will only express a hope that in the things which I have 
‘tried to say in this present volume (in a way far unlike the 
minuteness of an expert in philosophy) nothing may be 
found to be untrue in substance to that central principle of 
truth which I believe that I have learned from him. 

Among the many obligations which I owe to the—con- 
scious or unconscious—help of many friends, I must express 
my special gratitude to Dr Sanday, for the generosity with 


PREFACE XV 


which he has endeavoured, at certain points, to preserve me 
from blundering ; and has been willing to lend to me some 
fragments of the richness of his special knowledge. He has 
done this none the less, although there is no single state- 
ment throughout the volume for which he is responsible; 
and indeed it remains to be seen whether he will, or will 
not, be able to look upon it as a whole with approval. 

I must also thank my kind colleague of former years, the 
Rev. R. B. Rackham, for his ungrudging sympathy in all 
ways, and for not a little of the special help of his singular 
accuracy, in the exposure of errors in detail. 


CHRIST CHURCH, 
Advent, 1900. 


hier 
aT 
oa 


Ae lie 

eee 1 Seossiew tt 
aN yh scart] 3) 
7 f a2) 1 


) 
“ 
Cs 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 


PUNISHMENT 


PAGE 
All our experience is of z#ferfect punishment (or penitence, or 
forgiveness). The object is to see what these would mean 
—not as imperfect, but in their own reality é ‘ 5 I 
What is punishment? Dr Dale’s View. Pain—inflicted— 
because of wrong. Further statement; Pain—related to 
the sufferer’s capacity of self-consciousness of wrong—as 
an effect of righteousness. It is only possible in a person, 
or explicable in reference to personality. It is a moral 
means to amoral end. The “ retributive’ aspect belongs to 
the necessary imperfectness of human justice. Justice that 
is not omniscient can only be a very rough figure of what 
absolute justice would be. The “equation” theory is a 
corollary from the imperfectness of the “ retributive” . , 3 
Is there, then, no punishment which is not restorative? This 
view contradicts both experience on earth, and the possi- 
bility of Hell. But all punishment begins as moral 
discipline, and only in proportion as it fails to moralize, 
becomes ultimately “‘ vengeance.” Different as these are, 
the difference lies in the reception of punishment by the 
punished, not in the punisher. Limits within which it is 
right to conceive ofa“ punisher” at all. : ‘ ; II 
Guilt has two streams of consequence, (a) vengeance, (4) 
remorse. Endurance of vengeance, as such, has no atoning 
tendency whatever. But even such endurance can become 
an element, or education, towards penitence. Punishment 
taken up into the suffering personality as penitence, really 
tends to diminish guiltiness. Such penitence, however 
little it can on earth avert punishment, can quite trans- 
form its inner character. Punishment is meant to be spon 


xviii CONTENTS 


muted into penitence ; and it is only as Set that it 


has any restorative or atoning quality . ° ‘ 
Punishment, as retribution, cannot be predicated of Christ. 
Our own attitude towards punishment ; ‘ . 
CHAPTER II 
PENITENCE 


Penitence is as wide as humanity—yet distinctively Christian. 
It can only be personal—a condition of personality, under 
sin, yet made for, and capable of, righteousness. All 
conscious wretchedness is capacity of penitence. Penitence 
as love: and as belief. Penitence is a real change of self. 
It is the triumph of righteousness within . 

All experienced penitence is imperfect. Sin has affected che 
central self, past, present, and future. Real deliverance 
from sin must touch all three. How the present includes 
the future and the past. Perfect penitence would be such 
a change of self, as would, by contradiction, make the past 
dead, and re-identify the self with righteousness. Ex- 
perienced penitence, though imperfect, bears clear witness 
to the nature of penitence. Its climax would be personal 
self-identity with holiness; and righteousness and love 
would be one inembracing it. ‘ ; 

Such penitence is impossible. Sin once for all has aired the 
capacity of it. Its climax would only be really possible to 
one who, personally, was really sinless ‘ : 

On second thoughts, it is not only the climax of isibipleicel but 
any reality of it, that is, to sinful nature, impossible. Yet 
Christian experience is so full of it, that it may almost 
be said to constitute Christian experience. And the ex- 
perience of its unconsummated reality is the pledge of the 
real possibility of its consummation . 

Whence then comes it? It is the indwelling Suirte of me 
Crucified . ‘ A : : ° ‘ : 


CHAPTER III 
FORGIVENESS 


All Christian hope—and duty—hinges on “forgiveness.” What 
is forgiveness? “Remission of penalty” a first stage of 
thought, which experience must begin with, and must 


PAGE 
17 


23 


26 


31 


41 


46 


CONTENTS xix 


PAGE 
transcend. The true forgiveness is right forgiveness, 7.e. 

the forgiveness of Righteousness. . : ESI SRT ro Se 
Forgiveness is not simply not punishing: or treating as if 
innocent: or regarding as innocent. These things are not 
even moral, apart from a justifying cause. Forgiveness is 
only possible towards a person ; and must have its justifi- 
cation in his personality. It is exactly correlative to 
“forgiveableness” ; not arbitrary nor optional but (as it 

were) self-acting . ° 5 ° : 53 
Does this empty the word “ forgiveness ” of all disaiiog® not if 
man’s “ forgiveableness” is itself God’s work, not man’s. 
In any case the logical difficulty is not greater on this 
view than on any which makes God’s forgiveness other than 
irrational. But in fact all experienced forgiveness is pro- 
visional—a means to an end. The unforgiving servant. 
Forgiveness is not a transaction, but an attitude. It is= 
love. But love is called “forgiveness” just in the stage 
when it is still anticipatory, z.e. just when, and because, 
it provisionally outruns the capacity of deserving, or of any 

real correspondence withlove . , ‘ ; ‘ A 58 
Human forgiveness is to correspond with Divine. The nearest 
analogue is a parent’s forgiveness of a little one. Postulates 
involved in this. They do not directly apply to the case 
of a man outraged by his fellows. What is forgiveness in 
him ?—(a) a turning from them to God, (4) a looking, and, 
if possible, a working, towards their personal recovery to 
holiness. His relation may pale become almost 

parental “ae : : ‘ : ‘ 63 
Forgiveness not finally comshiinihted! till the consummation of 
holiness. Then it is wholly merged in love. All Christian 
hope of “forgiveness” must necessarily mean hope of 

personal holiness . SON ge A Ure dh ar Gene cue TK ce 71 


CHAPTER IV 
THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 


That the unholy may become holy, how can any mediation be 
relevant? In experience, which is deeper than logic, a 
friend who will bear is the best practical hope of the 
sinner’s reformation . ‘ } q : x ‘ : 74 

The impossibility seems most absolute in the forensic atmosphere. 

Some mitigations of it perhaps just conceivable even here 


xx CONTENTS 


—in proportion as he who would suffer is (a) uniquely 
capable of identification with the punished, and (4) uniquely 
capable of identification with the punisher . 

Illustration of a father with an erring child, and the siattiay 
between them bearing the weight of penitence, carries our 
thought further—yet breaks down at the point ; for each is 
still not the other . s ; 

Just here Catholic doctrine comes in. Christ IS Goan Seale: 
cally but identically. Tendency of thought to fall short of this 
truth. Popular Tri-theism. Dread of Sabellianism deters 
“orthodox” thought from adequate insistence on the unity 
of Deity ‘ 

Again, there is a real eal ee Lunia : ; aoa Christ IS Mune 
not generically but inclusively. Only Adam besides could 
ever be Man inclusively: and even Adam in an inferior 
sense. The Humanity of Christ is the Humanity of Deity. 
Hence its unique capacity of universal relation—through 
Spirit. If we realize very imperfectly what this means, so 
we do what our own personal being means. Yet the prin- 
ciple that Christians are one with, and are z, Christ, is 
inseparable from the whole New Testament; and is the 
basis of the Sacramental, which is the ee 
worship and life of the Church 

Christ then is not an intervening third term ; ‘becaiiis He is 
simply identical with the first, and simply identical with the 
second also . : ; ; ‘ ‘ é : ‘ é 


CHAPTER V 
THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 


Jesus Christ is God as man. His Humanity not impersonal. 
Himself Personally expressed in and through humanity . 


This Personal expression of Deity in humanity is always wv 


terminorum a human expression. In Incarnation He is 
never not Incarnate—not two, but One—God as man, 
rather than Godandman. He is therefore a real revelation 
not only of the truth of Divine character, but also of the 
truth of human character ; ‘ ; ‘ : 
Christ as the revelation of human nature. His life of obedience 
—its main characteristic, dependence. His Personal char- 
acter as man, consists in being the reflection of Another. 
Dependence inwardly, as meditation and prayerfulness. 
Dependence in outward action, as obedience. The obedi- 


PAGE 


77 


8I 


86 


92 


93 


95 


CONTENTS 


ence always to God. Contrast between this and His sub- 
jection at Nazareth . ; ; ; ; ‘ ; : 
The phrase “not of Myself.” Importance of this. Capacity, 
in a sense, of independent selfhood. The complete self- 
repression no mere phrase, but an intense moral reality . 
The relation to the Father asserted by Himself in Incarnation, 
is the relation of the Incarnate more directly than of the 
pre-existent UP ner : Wie de lia ever 


CHAPTER VI 
THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 


Christ “was made” sin; “condemned” sin. Reality of His 
relation to sin. Perfection of holiness, and perfection of 
contrition—the two impossibilities which would restore man 
to God—both realized in Him 

Christ the perfect reflection of God,—in ia’ | iaiacates 
prayerful dependence, active obedience. Even for the per- 
fecting of these, the necessary climax of His life was death. 
The death of Christ unique even as the climax of discipline, 
and of temptation. His power to save Himself, with the 
will not to use it . , ‘ ‘ ‘ ; , 

But it is also, in reference to bas sin, an soning and undoing. 
Perfect penitence requires an identity of the very self with 
holiness which is possible only to the personally sinless. 
Vicarious penitence, in some sort, a profound truth of ex- 
perience. Personalities not so distinct as we assume—often 
for sheer lack of unselfish will. Personality completed less 
in itself than in the reflexive jac ana of other per- 
sonalities . ‘ : 

Is the penitence of the weed teally soadibil 3 It is more begiibie 
than the penitence of the evil, which is reached through it. 
The case of a mother whose heart is broken for the sin of 
her child. Her capacity of this depends not upon her own 
possible share in the guilt; but upon the completeness of 
(a) her own holiness, and (4) the love in her which makes 
her one with her child. Such oneness is (a) of nature,— 
which does not include actual sin, but does include natural 
capacity of temptation to sin, and (4) of love, which perfects 
the capacities of community in nature. Both these oe 
only at most approximate in any mother ‘ 

But both deliberately assumed by Christ ; and realized in ithieie 
perfectness only by Him whose love was quite literally 


PAGE 


107 


109 


II! 


116 


121 


CONTENTS 


infinite, and whose consciousness of the nature and measure 
of sin was that of one who gazed upon the undimmed vision 
of the Holiness of God. With eyes full open to God He 
realized the fulness of the (otherwise unimaginable) con- 
sciousness of sin—within that bodily nature which had been 
the instrument, and was open to the galling access, of sin. 
Within the consciousness of sin He realized the appalling 
character, which is also the doom, of sin; while by His 
own inherent self-identity with holiness He attained to the 
(otherwise impossible) conditions of a perfectly atoning 
penitence . ; : : ; ; : ‘ 


Thus was penitence consumed) at the cost of a gradual, 


and voluntary, dissolution of Himself. Punishment, or pain, 
in any other sense but this, would not really have had an 
atoning character at all. But the destruction, by inches, 
of that nature in Him which constituted the avenue, or pos- 
sibility, of sin—and therefore also the instrument for the 
conquering of sin—was the absolute destruction of sin. In 
His death, sin was dead: and human penitence, which 
involves human holiness, once for all an accomplished fact 


NorE.—On the Cry upon the Cross . ; ’ . , . 


CHAPTER VII 


OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 


The problem of the relation of the historic atonement to our- 


selves. Difficulty in the fact that it zs historic; and there- 
fore anterior to, and outside of, our personal history. 
Truth in the subjective plea against a transaction that is 
merely outward. Failure of the subjective plea, if nothing 
happened in outward history at all. Objective and sub- 
jective are terms mutually correlative—and inseparable. 
What either would mean apart from the other . ; . 


The atonement was objective first that it might become 


subjective : historical fact that it might become personal 
experience. How? preliminary answers, — belief; con- 
templation ; love. To “love” and to “be in love with”—a 
person or a cause. Love does transcend exclusions. What 
we really love is never wholly without us. ° ‘ 


But (a) is the atonement, then, merely an appeal to our 


emotions? Or (4) is any adequate response from our 
emotions within our possibility? The answer to both is 
“No.” On these conditions the whole would quite certainly 


PAGE 


126 


129 
134 


136 


143 


CONTENTS xxili 


PAGE 
fail. The failure is within the meaning, and incapacity, of 

the personal “I” . : : ‘ . . - 148 
The answers hitherto, then, are aeite cualinivare and sug- 
gestive. What is needed is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 
Calvary without Pentecost is Calvary not yet in vital rela- 
tion with ourselves. The relation of atonement to man is 
incapable of explanation except in terms of Pentecost —the 
indwelling Spirit of Christ reconstituting and characterizing 

ARIST ASS Mba ; ; . , a ENA! AE ee 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RELATION TO THE BEING OF GOD 


The unity of God is the basal truth. Revelation of Divine 

“Persons” explains and expands, but does not contradict, 

unity. Personality not to be defined by distinction in terms of 

negation. Nor does God work in several “ parts.” ‘Ywéoracis 

and Persona. Value of the word Person. If personality 

isonly intelligible to persons ; can Tri-Personal be intelligible 

to uni-personal consciousness? Mutual personality in- 

herent in Divine Being. Our position wholly incompatible 

with Sabellianism. Unity of comprehensiveness, and of 

love, higher than unity of exclusion, or of number. Why 

this sounds a paradox to us. The sense limited in which 

we can say that one Person ofthe Trinity “is not” another. 

The presence of the Spirit zs the presence of the Son 

and of the Father . ‘ : ‘ ; : Satay iT | 
Analogies to the Trinity in douse: cand inman. Their value 

—and limitation. Risk of distinguishing the Divine 

Persons as diverse qualities. The analogy of a man (1) in 

himself, (2) in his bodily expression, (3) in his effective 

operation—the response which he has produced to himself. 170 
Orthodox desire to believe in His Personality should not prevent 

our understanding the Spirit as fully as we can as Response, 

Gift, etc.—just as the Theist reaches a higher conception of 

Divine Personality by dropping, for a time, personal terms. 

It is by making the most of the aspects we do understand 

that we rise, through them, to whatis higher. ‘ 176 
The Paraclete revealed, historically, as explaining the Retiaitity 

of the Presence and work on earth of the Incarnate. ‘Thus 

the revelation both of “Son” and of “ Spirit” is a result of 

Incarnation. In what sense Father, Son, and Spirit, are 

all words of metaphor—and in what sense the complex fact 


Xxiv CONTENTS 


of the Incarnation seems to be implied in, and to underlie, 
the whole sacred terminology . : ‘ ‘ 

New Testament language and thought entirely theninated i 
the fact of the Incarnation of God. The phrase “from 
God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ”—the 
Epistle to the Ephesians—the salutations of all the Epistles 
in the New Testament. The reference is not to the pre- 
existent Trinity: but to God the Eternal and God the 
Incarnate. And the realization of them zs God the Holy 
Spirit ;—the Spirit of the ARcArEE and therefore of the 
Eternal also . : 

It is as the Spirit, or peepetial hank REL of the 
Incarnate, that He is primarily revealed. Passages which 
expressly so speak of Him, particularly Rom. viii. and Eph. 
iii, The presence of the Spirit of the Incarnate zs the 
presence of the Incarnate, which is the presence of 
the Eternal, God. It is God, the Father, through the Son, 
in the Spirit. The witness of 1 John to this theology ; 

Summary and conclusion 

NotTE A. St Augustine’s caution aunt distinciishing the 
Persons of the Trinity in terms of separate qualities 

NoTE B. Question to what extent the word “Son” is directly 
applied to the Logosjas pre-incarnate, with special reference 
to Hippolytus (against Noetus) and to Marcellus of Ancyra 


CHAPTER IX 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RELATION TO HUMAN PERSONALITY 


Speculation, starting from the conscious self, is apt to assume 
that selfhood at least is both complete and unchanging. 
This has been markedly assumed in theories of atonement. 
Atonement only rightly intelligible if personality is con- 
ceivedaright. Reason, Free Will, and Love—three strands, 
or proofs, of personality ‘ : 

I. Free will—we cannot but claim it: yee our will is Sieber be 
free. What is free will? (a) It is not equal power of doing 
evil or good. Power to sin is a mark of will not really free. 
(4) Nor is it, exactly, power to make whatever we do wholly 
our own—to be an adequate cause to oneself. But (c) it is 
power to make wholly one’s own what is wholly on the lines 
of one’s own truest self. To realize it, then, is to be possessed 
by the Spirit of Christ: to be a mirror of human perfect- 


PAGE 


181 


185 


195 
202 


206 


208 


216 


CONTENTS XXV 


PAGE 
ness. It is obedience—to God, not to man. Fallacies 
about obedience, in the nursery or the convent. The 
obedience of Christ. Only, then, as obedience (in the true 
sense) is will really free or true selfhood realized : «7; “9a0 

II. Reason—it means not ratiocinative machinery, but true 
insight into truth. Individualism is the reverse of corre- 
spondence with truth. The more complex is the higher 
truth: moral higher than abstract; and spiritual than 
moral. Spiritual insight not non-rational, but the highest 
possibility of reason. Reason therefore not perfected till 
it is spiritually informed. Its real development is apt to be 
its apparent sacrifice. Its consummation is the indwelling 
Spirit of Christ. The paradox explicitly Scriptural. In their 
consummation free will and reason so coalesce as aspects of 
one whole, that they cease to be even distinguishable Reka i 5. 

III. Love—it is inherently within our nature, yet so imperfectly 
that it is only through refusal and sacrifice that it realizes 
its ultimate character as love: and that only, at me as 
realization of the Spirit of Christ . : 245 

Thus none of the claims of selfhood are realized ‘inact Be 
Christ. Persons good and evil do not equally illustrate 
what true personality means. The inherent presence of 
the Spirit of Christ is not merely a gift or adornment, but 
the realization, for the first time, of what selfhood inherently 
and always had meant. “I yet not I but Christ” a formula 
for Christian personality . ‘ ‘ . MULE roa irigiine Fs 


CHAPTER X 
THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 


All religion implies “dependence on another” in the form, at 
least, of (2) meditation and prayer, and (4) obedience in act 
as correlative with these. These are at their highest in the 
Church of Christ: but absorbed and transcended in that 
Sacramental life which differentiates the Church. The 
Church is the region, or expression, of the Spirit of Christ. 
It is relatively to that region, or capacity, of Spirit, that 
Her ordinances are what they are ; . ‘ : «256 
Baptism, as admission into Spirit. The analogy of birth. 
Baptism and Confirmation theologically one initiation. 
Initiation into Spirit is initiation into Christ—once for all . 260 
Holy Communion, as living on Christ—in Spirit. His Flesh 


xxvi CONTENTS 


and Blood=His Humanity ; and especially in respect of its 
atoning sacrifice. The analogy of food in Scripture—its 
meaning. Such “feeding” is as indispensable within, as it 
is impossible without, the region of “ Spirit.” The literal 
use of the Sacrament is identified, rather than identical, 
with this feeding upon the Flesh and Blood. The whole 
sacramental language and practice are emphatic vindica- 
tion of the bodily side of spiritual life: yet no less 
emphatically spiritual in their reality. Insidiousness of 
tendencies to materialize the spiritual : ‘ 2 ‘ 
The position, then, set out in the ninth Chapter, is entirely 
corroborated in the Church of Christ, and the sacraments 
which characterize the Church. The whole sacramental 
system means nothing else than personal identification, 
of the Church and all Her members, in the region and 
method of Spirit, with Christ . . +. .« «+ - 


CHAPTER XI 


RECAPITULATION 


Atonement cannot be a fictitious transaction, nor punishment a 
merely retributive pain: real penitence is not compatible 
with continuance in evil, nor real forgiveness with condona- 
tion of evil. But ideally, on analysis, punishment is found 
to involve the idea of penitence; and penitence that of 
perfect holiness ; and autor to be love’s embrace of 
holiness ; , ’ : ; : é F 

Christ is whole God in wile man. His life and death were 
the actual holiness (holiness as responsive obedience, and 
the holiness of ideal penitence), in, and of, human nature 

The Pentecostal Spirit is the perpetuation of Christ’s Presence 
in human nature, which is=the Church. This is the atone- 
ment of man; and our own self-identity with this is atone- 
ment in each one of us : , : 

The realization of Christ’s Spirit in us is not the habs, but jin 
consummation, of personality ——the real attainment of 
ourselves . . : 4 : ‘ ‘ : ; 

This is the one real meaning of Christ’s Church atie 
Sacraments . ; , ‘ ; : ‘ ‘ 

Our atonement, then, is Christ in us: basraloes realized in 
Christ . , ; : : e . ; , . 


PAGE 


265 


275 


277 


279 


281 


284 
285 


286 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XII 
OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 


The real difficulty of our exposition is its apparent failure in life 

Shall we acquiesce in lowering our ideal? No. The view ofthe 
world is wrong in fact. To spiritual insight the atonement 
is not a failure. What the real drama of life and history 
consists of ; 

Immense value, for orartien! fe, of ideal belief’ in canmral, cal 
of belief in the atonement in particular 

The failure of conventional Christianity—secularizing of ‘nals 
—‘ poisoning the springs ”—non-communicant Churchman- 
ship — cynicism — indifference to evil—lack of zeal for 
missions—the real spiritual deadness . 

The power of any fearless appeal to the sandal of Christ. 
The indirect witness. of spiritualism A 

Mysticism, its indispensable positive truth ; only out ol crenee: 
tion when treated as an ecceitioanl compartment of 
experience . : pi is 4 ‘ : j ‘ . 

The consciousness of saints. Their faith is the real insight of ex- 
perience. Yet though—or because—they know themselves 
in Christ, it is they who are the real penitents . ‘ ‘ 

Atonement, then, is objective and separate, only till the subjective 


PAGE 


287 


289 


294 


299 


306 


311 


316 


identification with it is consummated. St Paul’s “self” and © 


“not self.” The consummation never reached on earth. 
Even here it is, and is to be, discerned by aspiring faith ; 
yet the curtain of death falls upon man still adoring—in 
faith not fruition—the figure of the Crucified . : 


SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER 
THE ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 


Purpose of this historical chapter. History of a doctrine not 
always helpful, as history ; 
References in the Apostolic Wathers- atten but sateen 
and with no touch of later misconceptions. Vis 
Ignatius, Barnabas, Epist.ad Diognetum . : : 
The New Testament. Christ’s Death, its place, and HUE 
Sacrifice and Priesthood. “For us.” Three groups of 
illustrative phrases. Older misconceptions mainly mis- 
interpret the first group. Use and misuse of the word 
“metaphorical.” Protestant misconceptions mainly mis- 
interpret the second group. The third group not worked 
out enough . ; ‘ . ° . ‘ ; eee 


319 


324 


326 


332 


XXVili CONTENTS 


Irenzeus and Origen. Their illustrations, so far as untenable, 
enter but little into their own real thought, and still less into 
that of the Church’s worship : 

Athanasius. Essential relation of the Logos to hema ‘oly 
Deity within humanity could restore it, by living through 
death, and bringing man into unity with God. Inthe death 
of the Incarnate Logos all died: and His exaltation was the 
exaltation of all: because the Spirit was His: and He is 
in us by His Spirit y > : ; ; 

The misconceptions which ponietines seem to us immemorial, 
grew into Christian thought very gradually. Not for a 
thousand years did they constitute a serious burthen to 
worship or faith . : 5 ‘ ‘ 

Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? Its lie Sts. Riise necessary 
result of the way in which the question is stated. ‘ 

Abelard. Conforms largely to current language ; though his 
own real thought is different. “The love of Christ in us.” 
Abelard to Heloissa. The injustice of Bernard. How 
near Abzelard’s thought comes to the truth. Why it fails 
after all ‘ . . ; ; > > : ‘ 

Present thought. Mr Maurice. The late Master of Balliol. 
Dr Dale. His real work the assertion, against Latitudi- 
narianism, of the objective reality of the Sacrifice. His 
failure to correlate objective and subjective. The Cry on the 
Cross, and the “actual penalty of sin.” Total omission of 
the Holy Spirit. His exegesis of Romans stops short of 
Chapter viii. . ‘ , ‘ ‘ , ‘ : ‘ ’ 

Dr Macleod Campbell. Atonement not the cause, but the 

effect, of God’s love. Forgiveness—Punishment. Christ’s 

death the perfect repentance of humanity—the Amen in 
humanity to God’s judgment on sin. Not suffering, but 
righteousness, is its true essemtia. Penitence the true 
atonement ; 

the identification of Christ with semantey mpeeisctiy 
conceived. The very statement of it lays too much stress 
on distinctness, and contrast. Minimizing phrases— 

“dealing with the Father”—“ confessing our sins.” Minimiz- 

ing explanations of the “shame” and the Cry on the Cross. 

The Pentecostal Church, and sacramental life, have no place 

in his exposition of atonement . ; ; 6 Saat 

Archdeacon Wilson ; an impertinent dageketion. . ° 4 
CONCLUSION : : . NS lipaie: aaa aba sli 


Ye 


er 


PAGE 


343 


349 


366 


367 


372 


382 


396 


402 
410 
411 


ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 





CHAPTER |! 
PUNISHMENT 


AN obvious preliminary to any serious attempt to give 
an explanation of the doctrine of Atonement is a careful 
examination of the terms which are, and cannot but be, 
freely used in any discussion of the subject. Some of 
these claim a place at once so immemorial in human 
experience, and so fundamental to any conception of the 
doctrine itself, that it is apt to be assumed that they are, 
as it were, already current coin; that is to say, that they 
may be made use of, on all hands, without examination 
or definition, as having already stamped on them an in- 
disputable meaning or value, which will at once be intel- 
ligible, and intelligible in the same sense, to all who use 
them. . 

It seems worth while to begin by an attempt to cross- 
examine, one after another, three such primary terms 
or thoughts, so as at least to be clear, for further pur- 
poses, what we do, or do not, understand them to mean. 
The three are Punishment, Penitence, and Forgiveness. 
In each case it will perhaps be obvious to thoughtful 
people that it is easier to use these words, with general 
acceptance, than to define them exactly,—to others, or 


even to ourselves. In each case it may be no rashness 
1 
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*“ ATONBMENT AND PERSONALITY [cuar. 


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to suggest that current thought is apt to be confused in 
respect of the teaching which makes use of these words, 
in great measure at least because it is first confused as 
to its own meaning in the words themselves, 

There is one general suggestion, which equally applies 
to all three, which may be stated here. It is this: that 
whereas, in our experience, we are familiar with every 
one of these three things, punishment, penitence, and for- 
giveness, in a certain inchoate or imperfect condition, but 
with none of them in its own consummation of perfectness ; 
we are apt to frame our notions of what the words even 
ideally and properly mean, on the basis of our imperfect 
realization of them; and so to introduce elements and 
aspects, which belong only to their failure, into our ideal 
conceptions of what they themselves, in their own true 
nature, really are. No doubt, if all our experience is of 
their imperfectness, and all our conceptions must be based 
on experience; it may be said, with a certain verbal exact- 
ness, that all our conceptions must be framed on the basis 
of imperfectness. But if we realize the fact of imperfect- 
ness ; if, even within the imperfect experience, we discern 
the tendency and direction in which (though we fail to 
attain it) the consummation of these experiences would 
ideally be found; we may, on the basis of imperfect 
experience, approximately attain a true conception of what 
perfect realization would mean, This is the true use to 
make of imperfect experience. It is indeed only thus that 
we can discern the true meaning of free will, of love, of 
personality ;—of everything, indeed, to which our own con- 
sciousness bears inherent witness, but whose perfectness 
none of us has attained. This is to distinguish, in our 
experience, what it is that belongs to the lines of our true 
nature, and what to our own imperfect realization of it. 
This is the precise distinction which it is the aim of the 
present inquiry to make. But this is a widely different 


1] PUNISHMENT 3 


thing from taking the imperfect experience as we find it; 
and, without distinction, assuming blindly that whatever 
we there find in human free will, for instance, or in 
human penitence,—is itself a necessary element in what the 
words “ free will” or “ penitence” properly mean. 

It follows that our inquiry is ideal even more immedi- 
ately than it is practical. We desire not so much to find a 
working theory, say, of punishment, for our own ordinary 
use of it, as to find its ultimate meaning in the highest 
possibilities of human consciousness, Rudimentary experi- 
ence of punishment comes in chiefly as supplying the data 
for a theory which will certainly transcend all present 
experience; but which, as the goal towards which even the 
earliest experience is working, will really illuminate and 
explain, as certainly as it transcends, all its own rudi- 
mentary beginnings. 

But it is time to come face to face with our inquiry. 
What, then, first of all, is to be the real meaning, for us, of 
the word “ punishment”? 

As a preliminary answer let us take what will embody 
at all events a good deal of the popular feeling as to the 
meaning of punishment. Punishment, according to this, 
may be described as pain; deserved pain; avenging pain; 
pain that is, as pain, inflicted, from without, by another,— 
because of, and in proportion to, wrongdoing. The cause 
is the wrongdoing of the person punished. The action is 
the action of another. The object of the action is to hurt. 
And the hurt constitutes a kind of equation with the 
wrongdoing. Ifthe person has been rather wicked, he has 
to be hurt a little. If he has been very wicked, he has to 
be hurt a great deal. If the question be asked, what is the 
further object to be gained by the suffering of the guilty 
person, the answer will be that there is no object within 
the person himself: that the object of punishment regarded 
as punishment is a public declaration or manifestation on 


4 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


behalf of righteousness. It expresses the righteousness of 
the punisher; it exhibits righteousness to‘all those who 
stand by and look on. But, in respect of the punished, the 
direct object of the punishment, as punishment, is simply 
that he should suffer. 

I may say that in these descriptive words, I have before 
me the view of punishment which I understand to be taken 
by Dr Dale, a view which the position commonly accorded 
to his volume on the Atonement would appear to stamp as 
at least a general and representative view. Not reforma- 
tion, he insists, but retribution is the essential view of 
punishment. It is not, to quote his own words, “a painful 
process to effect future reformation; it is the suffering 
which has been deserved by past sin. To make it any- 
thing else than this is to destroy its essential character.” ? 
Again, “the only conception of punishment which satisfies 
our strongest and most definite moral convictions”... . 
“represents it as pain and loss inflicted for the violation of 
a law.”? “Suffering inflicted upon a man to make him 
better in the future is not punishment, but discipline.” 
“By some external force or authority he is being made to 
suffer the just consequence of his past offences. Whatever 
moral element there is in punishment itself—as punishment 
—is derived from the person or power that inflicts it.” 4 

I propose to criticize and to disallow the position which 
these phrases represent. But, before going further, I 
should like to point out that whilst these expressions of 
Dr Dale’s tend certainly too much to an idea of punish- 
ment as an external transaction of an arithmetical or 
quantitative kind, there are, nevertheless, on analysis, at 
least three positive strains of thought underlying them, 
which we may, without hesitation, accept. The three are 
these: first, whatever its ultimate rationale may be, 
punishment takes the form of suffering: suffering of body, 


UP.-396. 2 P. 38%. > P. 383. * P, 386. 


1] PUNISHMENT 5 


perhaps, but suffering anyhow, whether through the body 
or not, of mind and spirit. Secondly, this suffering is 
addressed to, and has direct correspondence with, a sense 
of guilt. It has no meaning, except in relation to the 
capacity, in the sufferer, of a consciousness of guilt. If I 
am to receive punishment as punishment, and to put some 
meaning into that word punishment as distinct from the 
merely physical sensation of pain, I must absolutely have 
some sense of right and wrong; some capacity at least of 
self-judgment, and of saying of myself, in the light of what 
is right, that I am identified with wrong. Even at this 
stage I cannot help remarking in parenthesis that to 
correlate punishment with a capacity of self-consciousness 
in wrongdoing is not the same thing as to correlate it with 
wrongdoing simply—apart from consciousness of wrong; 
and that the difference between the two will work out very 
importantly in the result. Thirdly, it follows from what has 
been said about self-consciousness of wrong in the light of 
what is right, that the pain which is recognized as punish- 
ment is thereby recognized as somehow representing and 
proceeding from righteousness: it is a manifestation or 
mode of righteousness: it is, in some way, the effect or 
operation of righteousness declaring and effecting itself 
upon (at least) if not within, me. It is, then, not simply a 
hurting, but the hurting of righteousness, the assertion 
of righteousness in the form of the chastisement of 
unrighteousness. 

Now so far I have endeavoured to put, in my own way 
rather than in Dr Dale’s, three thoughts which seem to be 
implied in Dr Dale’s conception. But there is a fourth 
consideration, clearly indeed implied in the way in which 
the three have been stated, which should be emphasized 
as cardinal for any real understanding of punishment. 
It is then of real importance to insist that, whatever 
punishment means, it is impossible to punish anything 


6 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


other than a conscious personality. Punishment only 
has meaning in—and in reference to—a person punished. 
You can break to pieces a stick that has hurt you: 
you can burn to ashes a paper that contains a slander 
against you: but you cannot punish anything inanimate. 
If you talk of punishing an animal, or try to punish 
it in fact, you can still do this only so far as you first 
endow it, or assume it to be endowed, with personal 
qualities for the purpose. You assume self-conscious 
identity, you assume continuous memory, you assume 
a power of moral discrimination. It is not of course 
to my present purpose to ask how far the assumption 
may be true, or what is the relation of animal con- 
sciousness to personality; but I repeat that the word 
punishment as applied to an animal only has meaning 
just so far as you tacitly assume certain personal 
characteristics; and the lower you go in the scale of 
animal life, the more totally unmeaning would the word 
become. It will be felt perhaps that it is possible for 
man to punish any animal that is capable, and so far 
as it is capable, of really caring for man. Nodoubt. But 
this is only to repeat the same principle in other words, 
Perhaps the root of personality is capacity of affection. 
At all events, to say that punishment is possible in 
proportion to capacity of affection is to make it correlative 
to a personal possibility. 

Now directly we set all this in the forefront of our 
thought about punishment, the question begins to 
present itself more forcibly than ever, whether we can 
simply acquiesce in the statement with which we began. 
If punishment is, in its real truth, an operation of 
righteousness, which is personal, dealing with moral 
personality, can it be anything like an adequate state- 
ment of the truth to say that punishment has exclusive 
reference to the past? or that pain, as pain, is in itself 


1) PUNISHMENT 4 


an object? or that there is any real equation between 
the pain, as pain, and the evil to which it relates? 

There is always a certain verbal inexactness whenever 
we speak of the punishment of sin. It is the sinner 
who is punished, not the sin. So long as men think 
chiefly of punishment as the punishment of sin, the 
simply retributive and equational aspect may seem to 
be the prominent one. The amount of hurt inflicted 
is the simple expression, and measure, of the necessary 
antithesis of righteousness against unrighteousness. An 
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, is a maxim 
which explains itself, with mathematical precision and 
clearness. But directly you begin to substitute the 
idea of punishing the sinner, the equation aspect 
ceases to be the dominant one. It gives place more 
and more to the thought of that moral purpose towards 
the sinner, of which the severity of punishment, the 
severity of the manifested antithesis against unrighteous- 
_ness, is itself a necessary stage and part. 

It is true that punishment still takes the form of pain. 
But if pain is in any sense an immediate object, must 
it not be—in an operation of personal righteousness 
upon moral personality,—that the pain is of the nature 
of a means to an end?—a moral means working to a 
moral end? And must not the true character and 
meaning of the punishment be found in the moral end 
to which it is a means? 

We are going now some way from Dr Dale; and 
may perhaps easily be tempted to state, with too much 
breadth, the opposing view. But to say the very least, 
has not room—full room—to be made for this conception 
of punishment? Turn for a few minutes to the thought 
exclusively of human punishment—the punishment of 
man by man. Is it not plain that we should have to 
exclude from the word “punishment” a very large 


8 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


percentage—nay almost the whole—of what is ordinarily 
administered as punishment,—if we did not expressly 
include the idea of pain inflicted by righteousness upon 
the potentially righteous, with a view to making their 
potential righteousness actual? In the case of a parent 
punishing a little child, or the master punishing an 
ordinary schoolboy, this comes near to being the whole 
account of the matter. Of course the master or the 
parent may lose his temper, and become himself quite 
unideal. But so far as he represents truly the ideal 
action of righteousness, his action in punishing may 
itself be called the necessary mode of the operation, 
under the existing conditions, of love. It is the love— 
itself another aspect of righteousness—the love which, 
fixing its eyes upon the unseen possibilities of the child’s 
true nature, discerns through what passage of pain he, 
though now marred by identification with unrighteousness, 
can be weaned and won from what he is to what he ought 
to be. 

But what is true so broadly of the parent, and true 
to a large extent of the ideal schoolmaster, by no means 
ceases to be true when we think of the relation of the 
judge to the prisoner standing in the dock for sentence. 
Even here itis true that punishment is rarely inflicted 
without the hope, at least, and desire, and purpose, that 
the punishment may be a means of moral good. 

It may be said, perhaps, that, at least in the case of the 
magistrate, any purpose such as this is only subsidiary 
and incidental: that here at least, punishment, in its 
primary significance, is directly retributive; and, what 
is more, that the principles of retributive punishment, 
as judicially administered, imply the conception of what 
may fairly be called an equation between the quantum of 
past guilt and the quantum of inflicted pain. 

It may therefore be worth while to insist that both these 


1) PUNISHMENT 9 


aspects, the retributive aspect, and the equation aspect, of 
human justice, belong indeed in fact to human justice; 
but belong to it not as it is justice, but as it is human; 
belong, that is, and can be seen directly to belong, to the 
necessary imperfectness of such corporate and social justice 
as is possible on earth.) Thus it is true even of a school- 
master’s justice, and much more of that administered by 
magistrates under the letter of statute law, that discipline 
must be administered by even-handed rule. What is the 
practical meaning of even-handed rule? It means that 
cases which themselves may be ever so diverse, if you look 
below the surface, must be treated in classes, as substanti- 
ally alike. It means in a word that the individual must — 
be sacrificed to the community. Within narrow limits 
no doubt there is a modifying power. But speaking 
broadly it means that again and again a punishment 
must be inflicted upon an individual with a view to 
surrounding society,—that is to its general effect upon 
other people,—which would certainly not be the wisest, 
the best, or the justest,—if there were nothing whatever 
to be considered but the inner truth of the personality 
of the offender himself. Divine justice is exactly just 
to the individual. But then Divine justice presupposes 
omniscience. The attempt to conduct human justice on 
Divine principles, but with human faculties, would end 
simply in the overthrow of all justice whatever. Human 
justice, to be justice at all, must necessarily under human 
conditions, be rough, inexact,—that is (too often) unjust. 
And yet human justice broadly represents, even when, in 
close detail, it travesties, the Divine. It is one of those 
instances in which a Divine reality is represented by a 
human counterpart; but only on condition that the human 
counterpart maintains keen consciousness of its distinction 
from, in the last resort even its fundamental contrast with, 
that Divine which indeed it represents, but represents only 


fe) ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY - [owar. 


in rough figure, through incompetent material. Now it is 
exactly this inherent impossibility of being perfectly just, 
which fastens upon human justice the retributive as its 
most characteristic aspect. In justice that was ideal, 
because Divine, retribution would not (to say the least) 
be the one simple differentia of punishment. 

And the equation theory is only a further adaptation of 
the retributive. It is only when our thought is dealing 
with guilt or punishment as counters—that is, as imaginary 
existences abstracted from the personalities of the guilty 
or the punished, that the equation theory even appears to 
explain anything. Remember that sin means a condition 
of a personality, and that punishment is a treatment of a 
personality ; and at once it is felt that equivalence between 
sin and punishment, even if it were possible to establish 
any measure of equivalence, would have no meaning and 
lead to no conclusion at all. No one, indeed, who views 
these things from the point of view of personality and 
personal character, even professes to believe in such an 
equivalence. No schoolmaster really supposes that the 
bad boy, however adequately punished, is a good boy, or 
even is, by virtue of the mere quantum of punishment, any 
whit the less bad than he was. It may be quite right and 
wise to treat what may be called his “school account” as 
closed. But this only brings into relief the really obvious 
fact that this “school account” is a very external thing, 
and is far from wholly coinciding with that inward reality 
which it outwardly, no doubt, represents. We may say of it, 
as we said of human justice, that it is a sort of symbol or 
parable of something which it only symbolizes truly, so 
long as it does zof claim identity with it. 

From this point of view we may recognize that all 
human punishment, the sentence passed by the judge 
upon the prisoner, no less than the treatment of the 
refractory schoolboy, aims at, and at least outwardly re- 


1.] PUNISHMENT II 


presents and symbolizes, a certain change in the culprit’s 
own personality. Whether the culprit is at all inwardly 
changed by it, is another question. But outwardly at 
least and symbolically, the prisoner standing for sentence 
is made to occupy the attitude of a penitent accepting 
discipline. If his punishment really effects its proper 
object—its only proper object, so far as the prisoner 
personally is concerned—it does so not by the quantum 
of pain endured by him, but by the extent to which that 
pain is in him taken up into the change of self which we 
call penitence. 

Now the object, for several pages past, has been to try 
and break down the verbal antithesis, quoted just now, 
between discipline and punishment. I hold that we must 
emphatically claim that punishment, inflicted as discipline, 
ts punishment. To rule out from the word “ punishment” 
all suffering inflicted or accepted, in the name of righteous- 
ness, and unto righteousness as an end—to rule out all 
personal discipline meant for personal holiness—would be 
to rule out at least the far larger part of all that any of us 
has, in fact, ever known or meant by punishment. 

May we, then, go at once to the other extreme? May 
we say that we know no punishment which is not dis- 
cipline? May we say broadly that the suffering in 
punishment is always, and only, a means? and that its 
whole real essence is restorative? It is precisely the 
premature tendency to embrace such an overstatement as 
this, which is in all probability the chief justification for the 
overstatement on the opposite side. | 

To say that there is no punishment which is not restora- 
tive will not account even for ali the facts familiar in 
human experience. It is plain that if we begin to punish 
with a moral intention in respect of the punished, hoping 
for his amendment ; our hopes may utterly fail. More and 
more, it may be, the depraved man becomes a human tiger. 


12 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


Then we punish, if we have the power, not the less but the 
more. If all hope should die down utterly, it is then that 
punishment would reach its supreme culmination. It 
would be the final mark and seal of the consummated 
impossibility of forgiveness. Even indeed from the very 
first we punish—if it is ours to punish,—alike the hopeful 
and the unhopeful criminals: and certainly do not punish 
those who seem obdurate /ess than those of whom we have 
good hope. And human experience herein is in analogy 
with the revelation of God. We dare not explain away the 
awful word “ Hell,” as meaning only a purgatory. We dare 
not, until the possibility of Hell has been authoritatively 
explained away, deny the ultimate possibility of the idea 
of a punishment which is zo¢ restorative. 

How, then, do we now stand? It may be agreed, 
perhaps, First, that all punishment is of necessity 
exercised upon a moral personality, a personality, that is, 
which either is, or has been, capable of righteousness : 
which either still is to be won to righteousness, or has only 
become incompatible with righteousness through its own 
resolutely immoral will. Secondly, that all punishment 
takes the form of distress and pain, whether chiefly of body 
or of mind. Thirdly, that this penal distress is correlated 
with wrongdoing, which is in the wrongdoer, and of which 
the wrongdoer is, or is capable of being, personally 
conscious. Fourthly, that this correlation of pain, in a 
conscious moral personality, with wrong, is itself an opera- 
tion or effect of righteousness, which it manifests and 
vindicates. 

But even when we agree upon these four points, we are 
met with a distinction, of crucial importance, between two 
contrasted ways in which such righteousness may be 
manifested, in an erring personality, as pain. It may be 
manifested within the personality, in the direction of a 
gradual re-identifying of the personality with righteousness, 





1] PUNISHMENT 13 


Or it may be manifested upon, and at the expense of, the 
personality ;—the personality being regarded as something 
which righteousness can only be righteous by condemning 
with inexorable condemnation. The point at present 
chiefly urged is that of these two contrasted alternatives, 
neither may be excluded from our thought of possibility, 
and neither may be excluded from our use of the word 
“punishment.” The word is applicable alike in the one 
case and the other, however different its import may 
become. And we may venture to suggest that attempts 
to conceive of punishment have too often broken down, 
because the conceptions really applied only to the one, or 
only to the other, of the two diverse characters of which 
punishment is capable. 

But there is something more to be said about the dis- 
tinction. Let us begin by asking what it is upon which 
the distinction turns. The answer is that it altogether 
turns upon the reception of punishment by the person 
punished, But this suggests another point about the 
character of the distinction. We have put the two senses 
of punishment as sharply contrasted. A process of love is 
indeed very different from a process of damnation. But it 
may not unreasonably be asked—How should the one 
word mean two such different things? And then, in 
another form, the same answer comes back; that different 
as they are in their result, in origin and inception they are 
not different. They begin as one thing. As far as the 
chastising righteousness is concerned, they would also 
continue as one. The difference comes in, not so much 
from the different action of the punisher, as from the 
difference in the personality that receives the punishment. 

In other words, all punishment begins as discipline. In 
so far as my disciplinary suffering educates me towards 
penitence, it is itself a mode of my progressive capacity of 
righteousness. It is a process—as inchoate and imperfect 


14 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


as you please ; but still it is a process, the ultimate climax 
of which, supposing that it could ever reach its ultimate 
climax, would be the real and consummated triumph of 
righteousness within myself. 

The antithesis of righteousness against unrighteousness 
is, of course and always, absolute and irreparable. And 
one aspect of punishment, from its most rudimentary up to 
its gravest stages, may be said to be the manifestation of 
this antithesis. But the very manifestation of this 
antithesis, in the way of punishment, in whatever inter- 
mediate sense it may be viewed as retributive, has, for its 
ultimate object, the welfare, not the hurt, of the sinner who 
is punished. Its latent retributive character (if the word 
may be used legitimately for the moment) is yet latent and 
secondary in reference to the primary purpose of punish- 
ment, which is a purpose of beneficent love. Only in 
proportion as this fades out of sight, through the sinner’s 
determined impenitence, does the punishment begin to be 
characterized at all primarily as retributive pain. 

This purpose of beneficent love is, we may venture to 
suggest, the proper character and purpose of punishment. 

But this purpose, or process, may be defeated, by 
the obdurate wickedness of the person punished. Then 
the punishment, whose purpose was discipline, has failed of 
its purpose. The punishment, which has failed in its 
purpose as discipline, remains as vengeance. There always 
was this aspect, or possibility, about punishment. From 
the first it was true that, just in proportion as punish- 
ment was not, as discipline, effective :—just in proportion as 
it was not taken up into the character as penitence :—just 
in proportion (in other words) as it was not transmuted, 
within the personality, from: an outward infliction of pain 
into an inward correspondence with righteousness :—just 
in that proportion it stood,—or was ready to stand,—as 
retribution pure and simple. And if the personality 


J PUNISHMENT 15 


should become, at last, the final antithesis to all capacity 
of penitence or righteousness, then the awful climax of 
punishment would be reached, when it is the inexorable 
manifestation of righteousness,—no longer, less or more, 
within the personal character, but at the expense of the 
personality, proved finally incompatible with righteousness. 
Righteousness, inexorably righteous, at the cost,—to the 
ruin,—of all that the very word “I” means, or can ever 
mean ; this is indeed the extreme damnation of hell. 
Hitherto we have been content to make use of such 
phrases as the “infliction” of punishment, by a “chastis- 
ing” righteousness. It is obvious, of course, that in all 
the lower analogues of punishment with which human 
experience is familiar, a punishment implies a punisher, 
exercising, with effect, the will to punish. But it is well to 
remember that infliction from without, by another, so far 
from being an essential element in all thought of punish- 
ment, tends more and more completely to disappear, as 
having no longer even an accidental place, in those deeper 
realities of punishment, which human punishings do but 
outwardly symbolize. The more we discern their process 
and character, the more profoundly do we recognize that 
the punishments of God are what we should call self-acting. 
There is nothing in them that is arbitrary, imposed, or, in 
any strict propriety of the word, inflicted. As death is the 
natural consummation of mortal disease, not as an 
arbitrary consequence inflicted by one who resented the 
mortal disease, but as its own inherent and inevitable 
climax; so what is called the judgment of God upon sin is 
but the gradual necessary development, in the consistent 
sinner, of what sin inherently is. The whole progress of 
sin is a progressive alienation from God; and the climax 
of such a progressive alienation is that essential incompati- 
bleness with God which we call hell. “The lust, when 
it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is 


‘is ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY __ [cuar. 


full-grown, bringeth forth death.”! Nothing is further 
necessary for man’s damnation, than that man, being in 
himself identified with sin, should be left by God alto- 
gether to himself. 

It is of considerable importance to insist upon this 
spontaneous or inherent character of the consequence of sin, 
in face of a tendency to emphazise the idea of the inflic- 
tion, and the inflicter, as part of the ultimate analysis of 
punishment ; and still more, whenever practical corollaries 
are drawn, representing God in the character of a merciless 
avenger, who has once pronounced, and will not be 
persuaded to withdraw, the sentence of His arbitrary doom. 
But apart from false imaginations such as these, the wrath 
of God, and the judgment of God, are themselves emphati- 
cally scriptural phrases. And if it is an aspect of the 
nature and being of God, as indeed it is, that (since 
righteousness is life, and life is righteousness) therefore 
sin must work out its own inevitable consummation as 
death; it is plain that there is a sense in which the doom of 
sin may be truly called the judgment, because it is a 
corollary of the being, of God. But however legitimate, 
in their own way, such phrases may be, it is clear, on the 
practical side, that they can easily be pressed to the point 
of very serious error ; and clear that, if examined theologi« 
cally, they have (to say the least) to be qualified by 
conceptions in which the intervention of an external 
punisher has, from first to last, no place. The chastising, 
or avenging, of righteousness, may still be legitimate, or, 
indeed, indispensable, phrases ; but in the use of them it is 
certainly necessary to bear jealously in mind the very 
considerable qualification of meaning, without which they 
would still be liable to mislead. 

But if the word punishment is capable of these two— 
so widely diverging—developments and interpretations, it 

1 Jas. 1. 15 (R.V.) 








1] PUNISHMENT 17 


is well to consider, a little further, the character of the 
contrast between the two. Let us take a case of 
conspicuous wrongdoing. A man is guilty of a cowardly 
murder. What are the penal consequences of his guilt? 
No doubt in various ways the proper consequences may be 
averted or delayed. But (perversions apart) there are at 
least these two streams of proper consequence ; on the one 
hand, the police and the magistrate, pursuit, arrest, 
judgment, the gallows, all which might naturally be 
summed up as vengeance: and on the other hand, wholly 
apart from anything of this kind, the sting of inward 
guilt, the penal misery, inherent, progressive,—in the end 
(it may be) stifling even to life—the penal misery of a 
murderer’s consciousness. | 

These two things, of course, are perfectly separable. 
Indeed we naturally think of them as separate. Consider, 
then, first, the vengeance of the gallows by itself. Of 
all such vengeful punishment it must be observed that, 
however righteous (in many aspects) the _ infliction 
of the vengeance may be, it does not, of itself, the 
least affect, or tend to affect, the criminal’s character. 
There is indeed, in the public infliction of disgrace 
and punishment, a certain sense of homage rendered to 
righteousness. This homage to righteousness which the 
personal endurance (of whatever kind) represents, would be 
realized perfectly in the perfect contrition of the criminal. 
Where there is no such contrition, the true homage to 
righteousness in his external disgrace, is, so far as he is 
concerned, only symbolized, not attained. But only when 
all idea of his penitence is eliminated, does the punishment 
become purely and simply the retaliation of vengeance, 
inflicted from without by another: and the homage to 
righteousness is in no sense within, but at the expense of, 
the personality of the criminal. 

The murderer, because duly hanged, is not the less 

B 


18 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


a murderer. Vengeance as such, whatever its degree, does 
not make, or tend to make, an equation with guilt. No 
conceivable equality between wrong done and pain 
suffered, could in itself so compensate as to cancel, or 
atone for, wrong. Regard the wrong done as debt, and it 
may be compensated. Regard it as a crime of which 
human law takes cognizance; and the hold which human 
law has, or ought to have, upon it, may by a certain 
endurance be exhausted. But regard it as moral taint, a 
perversion of the self of the sinner ; and it is plain that no 
endurance of punishment can, in itself, change the fact of 
moral perversion. Of vengeful punishment, as such, it is 
strictly true, that “whatever moral element there is” in it, 
is in the punisher only, not in the punished. As far as the 
person of the sufferer goes, there is in it no moral effect, or 
even tendency: there is no affinity with righteousness: 
need we add that what is neither moral nor righteous can 
have no shadow of atoning capacity either? We have 
said that the murderer is not, merely because he is hanged, 
the less a murderer. It may have been right to inflict the 
extreme penalty upon him ; but the essence of the “he” 
is not, thereby, necessarily touched. Vengeance, as such, 
hell, as such, has nothing of satisfaction or atonement 
about it. 

But, we shall ask, was he mo¢ touched? Did not some- 
thing come home to his heart? Did not the spirit within 
begin, however dimly, to soften and change, in the lonely 
cell or on the scaffold? If so, in however feeble or faint a 
degree, that is a thing, at’ once, essentially and altogether 
different in kind. We distinguished just now outward in- 
fliction from inward misery of conscience. Of course they 
are distinguishable. But, it is to be observed, that there is 
no element of outward infliction which may not minister to 
sorrow of conscience. Short of hell itself, we may say that 
all inflicted pain is, or may be, a contribution, though 


1. PUNISHMENT 19 


coming from without, and rough as yet and unshaped, 
towards what properly belongs to the sphere of remorseful 
penitence. All vengeful punishment in this life may be 
translated, as it were, by the fulness of its acceptance, 
from the side of vengeance to the side of penitence. It 
may be transmuted into penitence; it may become the 
way of forgiveness. But in itself, as infliction from with- 
out, it symbolizes not forgiveness but vengeance. The 
gallows can in no sense be called a form of absolution. In 
themselves, so far from being an expression of forgiveness, 
they are the express antithesis to forgiveness. They are 
the final setting of the seal to the fact that the transgression 
is mot forgiven. Yet even the gallows may minister, if 
indirectly, to contrition, and only just so far as they do so, 
have they any—even the smallest—tendency to diminish 
guilt, or to satisfy or to educate righteousness within. 

But the possibilities of penitence are inexhaustible. 
Consider, for a moment, the possible thought of a murderer 
for once ideally penitent. Now directly disgrace and 
punishment from without begin to be no longer inflictions 
merely from without ; directly they begin to be taken up 
and assimilated within; the man has begun to go over (as 
it were) from the side of his sin to the side of the con- 
demnation of his sin. And if his penitence should be all 
that we are able in imagination to conceive its being; 
behold! the punishment which he suffers,—-no longer now 
as merely passive suffering, but as a subjective homage, as 
a willing sacrifice within the soul,—is transfigured, and 
touched with something of the light of what we may dare 
to call atoning satisfaction. Not the suffering in itself, but 
the inward acceptance of the suffering; the homage to 
righteousness which is offered as suffering; the self- 
consecration to sacrifice; this, so far as it is true, is a real 
approach towards re-identification of self, in sacrifice, with 
righteousness. 


20 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


In vengeful punishment, as such, there was, so far as the 
person of the sufferer was concerned, no moral meaning or 
tendency. For this very reason, all vengeful punishment 
of sin, all determined infliction, by the will of another, of 
suffering just in order to make suffer, all, that is to say, 
which is not an element or ingredient in the discipline of 
human penitence,—being, as it is, not a condition of, but 
the final antithesis to, forgiveness, — would, upon the 
hypothesis, and in proportion to the possibility, of a 
penitence really adequate, really perfect, become not 
merely unnecessary or dispensable, but, in the sight of 
Him in whom truth and righteousness and love are 
inseparably one, not only unloving, but unrighteous, and 
untrue. 

Is the man, then, still punished? That may be. In 
human justice probably he is. But this is partly at least 
because human justice contemplates not so much the 
individual as the society, and must think primarily of the 
effect of its action, not on the criminal but on other men; 
and partly the infliction, even upon the penitent, of that 
full penalty which symbolizes the utter refusal of 
forgiveness, would find justification in the fact that 
humanity knows no standard by which to try, and has 
no proper right to accept, perfection of penitence. More- 
over it may be that the penitence could not as penitence 
reach its own consummation without this outward infliction 
of discipline ; an infliction which at the very moment in 
which, in the outward sphere to which it belongs, it seems 
symbolically to contradict forgiveness, does also, in 
the inner sphere of spiritual consciousness, inwardly 
serve to consummate the conditions which make a real 
forgiveness possible. In this regard the very gallows can 
become the consecration of a consummated penitence. 
Otherwise, except in this aspect as consummating 
penitence, and so far as the penitence could, as penitence, 


1.) PUNISHMENT 21 


be perfected completely without them, the very gallows, 
however humanly necessary, would have become, in inner 
truth, unjust. 

We cannot but observe that, the more ideally complete 
his penitence ; the more he accepts the penalty, renouncing 
it with full purpose of righteous will against himself asa 
murderer; the less is he in reality a murderer now. It 
would be another thing to say that human judgment could 
ever test, or ever be warranted in accepting, the full com- 
pleteness of a murderer’s penitence. Nay, we may still 
doubt whether it is within the capacity of human penitence 
to be within measurable distance of such completeness. 
We need not say that even on the—perhaps impossible— 
hypothesis of a penitence absolutely perfect, the man 
ought, in human justice, not to be hanged. It may be still 
men’s duty, on other grounds, to hang him, as it is certainly 
his righteousness to accept being hanged. But we do say 
that, if he still is hanged even upon that hypothesis— 
extreme, or, if you will, impossible—the hypothesis of a 
penitence quite absolutely perfect and complete; this 
would, upon the hypothesis, only belong to the fact that 
human justice necessarily is a most external and unideal 
thing. It might be, in the rough ways of human justice, 
right to inflict the vengeful punishment still. But those 
who did so would, even in doing it, know that vengeance 
without mercy had already become, in the Diviner sphere 
of perfect justice and truth, a thing untrue and unjust; 
that, in the unerring exactness of the truth of God, 
vengeance is zo¢ the due meed of a soul in which past sin 
has no longer any part, of a soul by grace really made one 
with holiness. 

Is he, the most penitent of penitents, still sent to his 
doom? It may be; but at least in such a case, observe 
how largely it is true that, what was punishment, is itself 
now so far transfigured, that we stand in some doubt 


22 ° ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


whether still to call it punishment. He suffers still? yes, 
but he blesses suffering; he chooses suffering: suffering 
now is the very expression of the effort of goodness in 
him. He is indeed the person who suffers. But he is, 
even more, the person who condemns sin, by passing 
sentence upon it even in himself: himself in inexorable 
contradiction against it, inexorable therefore towards 
himself, in that himself is identified with sin. This 
penal suffering in him can no longer be described as a 
retaliatory infliction by the will of another; for it has 
now become absolutely his own, the expression of his 
own extreme contradiction against any shadow of presence 
of wrong in himself; and just because it is his own will, 
rather than another’s, therefore it is in him the very 
identification of himself with righteousness, the consum- 
mation, in himself, of an absolute antithesis against sin. 

Are we talking only of ideals, which no one has realized? 
We shall indeed be obliged, with each one of our first three 
topics, to talk of ideals, if we wish really to see, in punish- 
ment, or in penitence, or in forgiveness, what the thing 
itself really is, and not merely what our imperfect realiza- 
tion of it has attained. What then, in this ideal case, 
is found to be the nature of the punishment? Observe 
how more and more absolutely it tends to lose its aspect 
as vengeance inflicted by another from without. Its 
rationale cannot be found in this. So far as it was dis- 
tinctively from without, it is now all taken up, and 
translated into the expression, from within, of detestation 
of sin. It is the man’s own inward homage to righteous- 
ness. As such, it ceases to find its character as inflicted 
pain. 

In addition, then, to the considerations already formu- 
lated, we may claim perhaps to have reached these further 
positions now; /first, that it is only so far as it is mot 
‘transfigured into a _ personal self -identification with 


a PUNISHMENT 23 


righteousness, that punishment remains in the aspect of 
retribution ; secondly, that it is just in proportion as it zs 
a process of self-identity with righteousness, that there 
is atoning capacity in the bearing of punishment; but 
thirdly, that precisely so far as it retains its character 
as inflicted retaliation, it has no atoning or restorative ten- 
dency whatever. The power of punishment to discipline, 
to sanctify, or to atone, is in it just in proportion as 
punishment, according to our ordinary language, ceases 
to be punishment, and becomes a mode of penitence 
instead; for, if penitence were all perfect, there would 
be no penal suffering which was not, in the fullest sense, 
self-chosen. Either the suffering of punishment is more 
and more absolutely identified with penitential painfulness ; 
or it has nothing atoning or restorative about it. 

If things like these are true at all, the conclusion must 
certainly be suggested, that it is only with the greatest 
caution, and exactitude of definition, that the word 
“punishment” can be safely applied to the atoning 
sufferings of Christ. We need not indeed deny that it 
may be verbally possible to use the word “ punishment” 
either of penitential or of retributive suffering; either 
therefore of the inconceivable painfulness of an infinite 
contrition, or (so far indeed as the thought is conceivable 
at all) of the infliction, in anger, of an infinite vengeance. 
But wherever the word is verbally identified with this 
latter sense, the sense of retributive vengeance inflicted 
by another; there, and so far, we should certainly be 
justified in protesting against its use in connection with 
the doctrine of atonement, or the Person of Jesus Christ. 

For ourselves, in the meanwhile, it is sufficiently clear, 
(1) that all our punishment presents itself at first to our 
unreflecting thought under the aspect of retribution, 
objective and external ; (2) that, on reflection, we recognize 
that all our punishment has really the disciplinary motive 


24 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


and meaning; that is, it is really a means, so to change 
personalities which are now potentially righteous but 
actually sinful, as to make them, in consummated anti- 
thesis against sin, actually righteous: (3) that in propor- 
tion as our punishment realizes its own meaning, its out- 
ward hardness tends to fade into an inner severity of will ; 
retribution more and more is merged in contrition; penal 
suffering comes ever increasingly to mean the suffering of 
penance rather than of penalty: but (4) that in proportion 
as it fails in that essential purpose which made it what 
it was, it does acquire more and more that simply 
retributive character, whose climax is not Calvary but 
Hell. 

This is the great alternative for ourselves. Either the 
sense and touch of penal suffering becomes more and more, 
within the spirit of the punished, a bracing of strength, a 
deepening of the personal homage to God, a progressive 
expression of contradiction against sin, a progressive 
identification of the real self with righteousness; or else 
it is, as mere pain, futile and helpless, having in it 
no satisfying or restorative element, but destined only, 
in the last resort to become the extreme opposite—the 
precise alternative and antithesis—to any possibility of 
forgiveness, 


If we believe that the value and glory of punishment 
is in proportion as it becomes self-chosen,—taken up into 
personal abhorrence of sin; it is possible that our own 
instinctive attitude may be modified towards all that 
familiar penal discomfort which we now have, or are likely 
to have, to bear. The leading instinct may by degrees 
be rather—not to shrink, to avoid, to beg off, to groan 
with self-pity ; but rather to accept, to use, and to make 
the most of it, as indispensable—as invaluable—means 
of beauty and of power. It is the punishment which the 





tJ PUNISHMENT 25 


will wholly accepts, which is really, in quality, purifying. 
It is possible that, with such a fixed conviction, men 
might be really the readier to receive punishment,—that is, 
the pain and sorrow which may serve as discipline; and 
more eager, by acceptance, to translate—or rather, duti- 
fully, to allow and accept the translation of—the pains 
and sorrows which do fall upon them, into the salutary 
sorrow and pain of the sacrifice of penitence, 


CHAPTER I! 
PENITENCE 


WHAT shall we say that we mean by Penitence? It is 
something, no doubt, the germ of which lies deep within 
the universal experience of the human heart. Yet it is 
something which is, to natural experience, so incomplete, 
so unexplained and so inexplicable,—until it finds in 
Christianity its appropriate place, its divine explanation, 
and (we may add) its divine beauty and sweetness; that 
we may with more exact truth describe it as a character- 
istic experience of the Christzan consciousness. And 
its place in the Christian consciousness can hardly be 
exaggerated. Wherever the Christian consciousness is at 
all come, or coming, to itself, there penitence is at home. 
It is hardly too much to say that’ penitence is itself an 
inalienable aspect of the Christian consciousness. 

It was impossible, while speaking of punishment, to 
make any serious attempt to examine the ideas which 
were involved in it, without implying a good deal also 
as to the content of the word penitence. Yet there 
remains very much more to be said. 

The first thing to be said is very important, and would 
bear minute analysis, though it must be said shortly here. 
It is that we must necessarily conceive of penitence as a 
condition of a personality ; a personality which has affinity 
with, and is capable of, righteousness ; a personality which 
at the same time has self-consciousness of sin. So much is - 
presupposed as a foundation for the possibility of penitence. 


CHAP. I1.] PENITENCE 27 


Penitence is an aspect, a climax, of conscience of sin. But 
conscience of sin would not be exactly conscience of sin, 
save in a personality which was capable of righteousness ; 
nay more, a personality of which righteousness was, in 
some way, the proper nature and necessity. Capacities of 
personal character, made in, and for, yet fallen beneath, 
God’s image; only on the assumption ot these can the 
word penitence have its distinctive meaning at all. 

Now wherever there is underlying Divine capacity, 
marred by the consciousness of moral evil, with which the 
personality is self-identified ; the first and simplest result 
is wretchedness. And even while our thought is at this 
stage, we may perhaps legitimately look out upon the 
whole vast sea of human wretchedness, and claim it all 
as something which in itself is directly correlative to 
possibilities that are only Divine. Wretchedness, indeed, 
as mere wretchedness, is not penitence. How dumb it 
often is, and pitiful, and perplexed, and ignorant of its 
own nature, and less than germinal! There is nothing, 
with which, if we try to look out upon life from the ~ 
Christian point of view, we should find ourselves more 
intimately familiar, than the wide, seething, restless dis- 
comfort and discontent of spiritual nature, which is not 
indeed, but which might be, and is to be, penitence. And 
we know how small a change,—nay, no change at all in 
outward circumstance—may transform the whole scene. 
A little turning of the face to the east, a little melting of 
the stiffness of heart, a little kindling of a new desire, a 
little lighting of the flame of the spirit,—and behold! a 
new tinge faintly begins to flush upon, and to light up, 
what was nothing but gloom. The waves and the clouds 
are the same; but they were mere leaden darkness, and 
they are the very material of the sunset glory. Mere 
sorrow has much to learn. But even in the sorrowing 
heart, as sorrowing, there is at least an implicit noble- 


28 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


ness. We might say indeed much more than this. The 
sorrowing heart, as sorrowing, contains implicitly the whole 
mystery of penitence, which is the mystery of human per- 
sonality, and its inherent possibility of divinely spiritual 
life. Sorrow of heart is the signal prerogative of man; 
and it marks his origin and his destiny, as, in real truth, 
divine. 

Again, to keep still to phenomena which are familiar, 
we recognize that penitence, in proportion as it is penitent, 
must be an emotion of love. If penitence expresses itself 
in sorrow, the spring and the cause of penitent sorrow is 
love. And not the spring and cause only. Love does not 
only make the tears first to begin. But, all through, they 
are love. Love is their essence. Love is their character. 
The first tear, and the last, is a sign, is an utterance, is 
an act, of love. “Behold a woman in the city which 
was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in 
the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 
and stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and began to 
wash His feet with her tears, and did wipe them with the 
hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them 
with the ointment.”! What is the explanation? “For she 
loved much.” The sorrow is no mere accompaniment: it 
is the form which such love must necessarily take. If 
penitence is sorrow, it is so far like the lover’s sorrow; 
the lover who is in love with one whom he feels to be 
hopelessly far above him, perhaps in station, at least in 
goodness and love. Itis not to him love amd pain. But 
the love zs the pain. And the pain,—he would not for 
worlds be free from it; for it is the necessary condition, 
it is the evidence, under present conditions at least it is 
of the essence, of his love. An anodyne which would kill — 
the pain, would benumb the love: slackened pain would 
be love’s decaying: only living pain is living love. So 


2 Luke vii. 37, 38. 


11.) PENITENCE 29 


penitent sorrow is a sorrow that is blended with, and 
proceeds out of, love: sorrow that is the sign, the act, 
the utterance, and the relief, of love. Sorrow has become 
love’s instinct, love’s necessity. It is love which itself is 
heartbroken because of its own outrage against love. 
Here too, it is not love amd sorrow: but sorrow which 
can be recognized as love, love which, just because it still 
loves, cannot but be sorrow. 

Again, we recognize sorrowing love, on another side, as 
itself a manifestation of vivifying belief. “Jesus, remember 
me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.”! These are the 
words of grace in one who will bear, as long as this world 
lasts, the undying title of “the penztent thief.” And nothing 
in his penitence appeals to our imagination with such extra- 
ordinary force as the limitless power of faith which it in- 
volves, In spite of conditions physically the most cogent 
and most crushing, out of the midst of the terrible realities 
of literal crucifixion, he can look up and see, in one who to 
the merely outward eye is but another criminal in his death 
agony, the LoRD of death and of life. This is no dream 
dreamed softly in moments of ease. It is faith, without 
any help of outward sense, transcending and transforming 
the most appalling realities of outward sense. It is faith 
which sees at last, and (in spite of extremest disabilities) 
embraces as wholly real, the very thing which is most 
essential reality. It is a supreme triumph and marvel 
of belief. Belief, it may be said, should come before 
love: for love implies a basis, first, of belief. Yes, in 
logic perhaps it does; but does it so always in life? 
Often perhaps it is love which draws, towards goodness 
and towards God, those who, till they love, hardly believe ; 
and who now feel that they believe because they love. 

But after all, it is rather that we may not seem to have 
omitted them, that we glance now at these familiar aspects 


1 Luke xxiii. 42. 


30 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


of a deepening Penitence. These are full indeed of their 
own deathless interest. Yet these are not the lines of 
thought about penitence, which it most concerns our 
purpose at present to pursue. We want now to ask not so 
much of this or that aspect of penitence, however significant 
in itself, or however touching, as of the whole, and the 
meaning of the whole as whole. What we want to con- 
sider is the fullest import of the word perdvo.e,—containing 
sorrow, love, faith, and whatever besides,—as a real changed- 
ness of the life and the mind: nor indeed of the life and 
mind only—or anything else which can be even abstractly 
detached and considered apart from the unifying self; as a 
real changedness, then, not only of life or mind, but of the 
very self that lives and wills. 

In speaking of punishment we endeavoured to distin- 
guish, as following naturally upon sin, two distinct trains of 
penal consequence ; on the one hand the whole system of 
external punishment; on the other the whole history and 
process of inner anguish of soul. And we ended by asking 
for the acceptance of these two principles ;—first that the 
whole content of the former is capable of being transferred, 
by dutiful acceptance, so as to become the mere material 
of the latter; that is, all incurred pain may be transfused 
into penitence ; and secondly that except only just so far 
as it is in this way transfused, and ministers to, or re- 
appears as, penitence, penal pain is of no moral value to 
the punished personality at all, Righteousness may 
indeed be vindicated in the mere fact that I am severely 
punished. But except just so far as my punishment 
becomes, in me, the expression and voluntary sacrifice of 
my penitence, it is not within me, but without, that 
righteousness is vindicated and becomes triumphant. 

On the other hand just so far as my punishment does 
really become my penitence, so far does righteousness win 
in my punishment a fuller triumph; for so far is it true 


11.] PENITENCE 31 


that,—within my very self, as well as without,—punishment, 
translated into penitence, is in the highest sense, the victory 
of righteousness. 

We are familiar with many, very varying, degrees of 
penitence ; many of them indeed most real, but none wholly 
perfect. It is of considerable importance moreover for the 
truth of our conceptions about penitence that we should 
bear clearly in mind this fact, which as fact, is surely 
indisputable: the fact that we know every degree of 
penitence except that one which alone would realize the 
true meaning of the word. It is of course from experience 
that we are to judge. But much as experience teaches us 
about penitence, it is important to remember that all the 
penitence realized within our experience, is of necessity 
imperfect penitence. If then we desire to know not what 
imperfect penitence is by reason of its imperfectness: but 
what penitence, apart from its imperfectness, really would 
mean: we must be explicitly prepared not indeed to con- 
tradict but at least to transcend experience, and contem- 
plate something which we have never seen, 

Bearing in mind this truth,—which will become perhaps 
increasingly prominent,—we return to the thought that the 
penitent, just so far as his penitence is sincere, if he is, 
undeniably, himself the same man who sinned, yet, in a 
sense subordinate, but hardly less important, is really—is 
even essentially—different. 

Consider our instinct,—an instinct with only too much 
of reasonable basis—of the indelibleness of the effect of sin. 
When a man has sinned, and knows that he has sinned; when 
the eyes of his spirit are opened, even in part yet really, to 
see sin as it is; the fatal misery is that the sin which he so 
sees has become a very integral part of himself. From an 
external plague, a suffering, a load, a debt, he might be 
delivered, How can he be delivered from that which he 
himself is? 


32 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


A man is deeply in debt. Find him means to pay the — 
debt off,—or pay it for him; and he will be free. A man is 
grievously ill. Treat the illness aright, find the proper 
means of cure; and he will be perfectly well. There is, we 
observe, no contradiction here, for in fact, in spite of the 
form of our common phrase, it never was the real “he” 
who was ill. Ill or well, it was, so far, the same unaltered 
“he.” The sickness, or the recovery, were as such, ex- 
ternal to the real self. He was externally affected by 
the sickness: he was externally affected by the recovery. 
But in sickness or in health it was the same “ he.” 

But it is not so when in perverse will, he has accepted 

and identified himself with sin. Sin in him is more than a 
— load to be borne, more than a debt to be discharged, more 
than a slavery to be annulled, more than a sickness to be 
healed: nor will any one of these metaphors, or the 
scenery which belongs to these metaphors, symbolize 
adequately the whole truth of his case. For in all these 
metaphors, suggestive though they be as far as they go, 
the essential self remains untouched. So far as these 
metaphors go, the man loaded or freed from load,—the 
man in hopeless debt or with the debt paid,—the man 
enslaved or redeemed from slavery,—the man in sickness 
or recovered from sickness,—is the same man. On either 
side of each proposition the quality of the subject is un- 
changed. But sin enters wzthzm, Sin affects and perverts 
the central subject, the essential self. Delivery therefore 
from accomplished sin must mean not only a change of 
the circumstances or settings or conditions of the central 
subject ; but such essential alteration in the subject him- 
self, that he himself shall both be what he is not, and shall 
not be what he really is. 

It is necessary for our purpose to try and realize in 
thought what a real deliverance from sin would mean. 
The true consciousness of the awakened sinner is 





11.) PENITENCE 33 


indeed naturally overwhelming. He has sinned. He is 
sinful. The sin is so in him that he cannot but continue 
tosin. His past, his present, his future, all are caught and 
ensnared. How caz he, who truly is sinful, become before 
God, truly sinless? A real deliverance, to be possible at 
all, must embrace at once and transform past, present, and 
future. The least of these seems an impossibility. But 
indeed to leave out any one of the three is in fact to 
vitiate all. 

But on further thought we may perhaps perceive that 
the three are not so distinct as they had seemed to be. 
Thus the future is not really separable from the present. 
Except as an abstraction, ideally regarded, the future in 
practice means the continuance of the present,—the present 
carried on from moment to moment. Power to live 
sinlessly in and for the future means not something 
distinct or severed from the present, but a present power 
continuing continuously onwards,—a perpetual and un- 
broken present. The present, then, really contains the 
future. The future is an aspect of the present. Real 
possibility, or impossibility, of present holiness—so it be 
not ended or altered,—carries with it the future too. 

Again there is a sense, much more real than we some- 
times had thought, in which the past also is really an 
aspect of the present. For the past, as mere past, would 
not concern me now. But it concerns me as it affects what 
I now am, as it remains in me still, an abiding, alas! and 
inalienable present. This may perhaps find illustration in 
the bodily life. Ifso many years ago I caught a cold, and 
so recovered from it that it left no trace, no effect at all on 
my bodily record, that cold, as mere history, is no part of 
what I am. But in so far as it, however imperceptibly, 
contributed to my physical sensitiveness or left any other 
continuity of result, just so far the past fact remains in- 


grained as an element in my present bodily self. So the 
C 


34 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


act and the wish long ago, in so far as it made its con- 
tribution, however small, to my character, remains. Only 
if it made none, it is gone. Now it is characteristic of real 
moral evil, as of real moral good, that it cannot but affect 
the character of the self; and our point at present is to 
urge that it is precisely in this way that the past sin so really 
touches me still. Because it is part of the character of the 
very self, and the self remains, therefore the past sin 
remains, for me and in me, still. It concerns me not as 
merely historical past, but as abiding in me, as present, 
still. It is this abiding presentness of the past in me, 
which is to me the real meaning—and terror—of the past. 
A past which was past merely, a past which had nothing in 
me as present at all, could have nothing in me as past. 

So the sin of the past is an abiding present; and this 
we are conscious that it is in two distinguishable ways. It is 
in us both as present guilt and as present power. Closely 
allied as these are, we do not think of them as simply 
identical. The most complete removal of past sin as 
present guilt—which is what is often meant by the phrase 
forgiveness of sins—would not of itself remove, might 
perhaps hardly even touch, the hopelessness of its yoke as 
present power. Tell the passionate man that he is forgiven 
every outburst of which he ever has been guilty: forgiven 
freely, absolutely, from this moment: remove all shadow 
or suspicion of guilt; yet will he not thereby have acquired 
a perfect mastery of temper; when the provocation comes, 
he—the same he—will break into fever again. On the 
other hand, the completest removal of the tyranny of the 
past as present power, the completest imaginable capacity, 
for present and for future, of temperance or holiness, does 
not seem to go far towards undoing the passionate deed 
that is done, ze. towards cancelling the past as present 
guilt. The guilt of that which has been guiltily done 
seems to be abidingly contained in the fact of my self- 





11.] PENITENCE 35 


identity with the past. It is part of that continuity which 
personality means. How is it possible to be rid of this— 
this necessary self-identity with the past, which seems to 
be still present in me as guilt, as inveterately as I am I? 

It has been, then, constantly felt that a real deliverance 
from sin must necessarily have each of these two aspects. 
It must mean a real removal of the conscience of guzlt, 
which is the inherent presence of past sin in the soul. 
And it must mean such undoing of the Jower of sin, such 
effectual conquest of evil tendency and evil taste, as to 
make present and future holiness possible. It is one thing 
to be forgiven, to this moment, every touch of what has 
been wrong; it seems like quite another to have the 
possibility—nay to have even the hope,—of living from 
henceforth the divine life of holiness. 

If, of these two, any real cancelling of the past is the 
harder logically to conceive; there are moods in which, 
sweeping past logical difficulties into something of in- 
stinctive moral light, the penitent conscience can believe, 
without a qualm, that a reality of most true forgiveness, a 
cancelling of the uttermost past, is not possible only, but 
(as it were) under certain contingencies almost natural; 
while it shrinks back, daunted and despairing, from any 
real faith, or hope, of abiding holiness. 

The problem how the really unholy can be made to 
become really holy,—the actually sinful to be in the 
verity of Divine truth, actually righteous; is not yet 
solved, until both these difficulties are dealt with, and 
both are satisfied. 

Of course the two are not really so distinct as they 
seem. The more deeply either is examined, the more is 
it found to be impossible, nay ultimately even unthinkable, 
in distinction from the other. But still it is with the one 
aspect rather than the other that our thought is immedi- 
ately concerned. Of what nature is the possibility of a 


36 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


real redemption from the past? How can I, if I have 
lied, be not a liar? How can I, if I have murdered, be 
not a murderer? How can I, if I have sinned, be not a 
sinner? 

We endeavoured in speaking of punishment, to insist, 
as emphatically as possible, that penalty, regarded as 
inflicted suffering, had no tendency whatever to cancel, 
or attenuate, guilt. But penalty is capable of translation 
into penitence. And behold, there is no degree of re- 
morseful penitence, from the lowest to the highest, which 
has not in it some dim element of this transforming 
possibility. 

The very moment we turn from the thought of inflicted 
penalty—be it what it may,—to the penal suffering of the 
remorseful conscience, we feel instinctively that there is a 
mighty change. It is not that remorse, in itself, is any- 
thing but misery. Remorse that begins and ends with 
being remorse, is a fruitless endurance, not a moral quality 
or progress. Remorse is not necessarily penitence. But 
however clearly we may see, in their fuller developments, 
the contrast between what is meant by remorse and by 
penitence, no eye can trace, in fact, the imperceptible 
degrees by which remorse, without’ conscious alteration of 
content, with hardly the faintest breath of some new 
meaning upon it, may become itself the material, and 
beginning, of penitence. Remorse is a thing which seems 
to us to begin very naturally. And since — whether 
explicably or not—remorse does in our experience deepen 
towards penitence, as simply, as silently, as if penitence 
were a possibility of the natural life, we may for the present 
moment, without asking whence or how this possibility has 
come into human nature, regard remorse as the germ of 
penitence, and penitence as that completeness which gives 
its true character and meaning to remorse. And if so, we 
cannot but recognize that remorse, in a low degree 





11] PENITENCE 37 


even at first, and more and more as it is disciplined and 
ripened towards penitence,—incomplete and unsatisfying 
though it may be; yet has, in marked contrast with 
vengeful infliction of punishment, this innate, progressive, 
and most characteristic tendency,—to bring change in to 
the essential character of the sinner’s very self. 

If I have murdered a man, how can I not be a 
murderer? Within a world made up of before and after 
—within, that is, the conditions of our own experience— 
it is indeed not possible that the past deed which is done 
should be ever undone. So far as the word “murderer” 
has a strictly historical meaning—‘“ one who did murder” ; 
so far,in a world of before and after like ours, it can 
_ never, being once true, cease to be true. But, in so far as 
the word “murderer” has any present meaning or 
implication, in so far as it makes any assertion at all about 
the present character or being ; we cam see, even within 
the conditions of our own experience, that there is that in 
penitence—(in punishment therefore too so far as punish- 
ment is transfigured into and reappears as penitence)— 
there is that in penitence which, just in proportion as the 
penitence approaches nearer and nearer towards its own 
perfection, has a tendency, to say the least, towards making 
the present assertion more and more unmeaning. 

One has lied, or one has stolen. Is he indeed, for ever, 
liar or thief? look at him—as his penitence deepens with 
more and more of insight and of beauty. Is he untrue? 
Why his whole soul loathes untruth, loathes it everywhere 
and always—loathes it most of all in himself, and therefore 
loathes himself as liar. Visibly he is learning to loathe it, 
—with no shallow sentiment, but even as eternal truth and 
righteousness loathe it. He is transferred as it were to the 
side of eternal truth and righteousness. Call him liar: 
taunt him as liar: it may be that he does not resent or 
refuse, It is part of the loathing of the sin in himself that 


38 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY {cHaP. 


he does not refuse for himself either pain or shame. It 
may be that penitence is so far incomplete which would 
shrink back from any shame of suffering. But beware! 
his meekness under taunt, his acceptance of suffering, is 
now itself the expression of the man’s growing self-identity 
of spirit with righteousness. Beware lest that which is 
righteousness in him be in you not only the most dastardly 
form of spiritual cruelty, but also the most awful outrage 
against truth :—while you dare to blaspheme, as the spirit 
of a liar, what you ought to be able to recognize, in awe, as 
the very light of the sovereignty of the spirit of truth! 
Yes, just in proportion as, in his self-surrender, he accepts 
shame as the penalty of lying,—he is in fact further and 
further from having anything in him of a liar. He is more 
and more personally identical with the righteousness and 
truth to which every form of untruth is intolerable. Call 
him false? Why he is the very antithesis to falsehood 
The past act has no place, as falsehood, in the present self. 
As falsehood at least the past is literally and absolutely 
dead. So far as it lives, it lives only as the very opposite, 
—as consummated victory over falsehood. 

We are trying to think, at this moment, not of an 
imperfect, but of a perfect penitence. A man has been 
in the depths, under the slavery of passion, or of drink. 
Imagine, if only for hypothesis’ sake, not so much of 
penitence as you think you may probably hope for, but 
a penitence for once quite perfect. Think then of the 
clearness of his insight into the terribleness of that 
degradation which has become the very condition of 
his life, Think of the pain of the struggle against sin, 
and the anguish of shame because to abstain is so fierce 
a struggle and pain. He is impotent, even to anguish: 
and it is anguish of spirit to be impotent. Every step, 
every consciousness is a pain. Think of the pain of the 
disciplinary processes (which, even though pain, are his 





1.) PENITENCE 36 


hope, his strength, his joy!), the pain of the sorrow, the 
depth of the shame, the resoluteness of the self-accusing, 
self-condemning, self-identifying with the holiness outraged, 
the self-surrender to suffering and penalty, the more than 
willing acceptance, and development in the self of the 
processes of scourging and of dying. Though every step 
be shame and pain, he flinches not nor falters, for moment 
by moment, more and more, his whole soul loathes the sin 
and cleaves to the chastisement; he will bear the whole 
misery of the discipline of penitence, that, at all cost of 
agony, even within the dominion and power of sin, he may 
yet be absolutely one with the Spirit of Holiness, in un- 
reserved condemnation and detestation of sin. 

The transformation of the thorough penitent is 
marvellous indeed—even to thought. The personality 
which had revolted from righteousness, and identified 
itself with the will of sin, is now re-identified with righteous- 
ness in its condemnation of sin,—in its condemnation, 
therefore, of himself. Though others condone, he adjudges 
himself to shame. Self-disgraced, self-condemned, self- 
sentenced, he offers himself to voluntary punishment. 
He had outraged righteousness. But now, the true self 
is wholly ranged and identified, not with the revolting 
will, but with the righteousness, outraged, pleading, and 
condemning ;—at the conscious cost of all shame, all 
suffering, even death, to the self, because it is the self 
that has sinned. 

It will be felt, of course, that all this is ideal? There 
is no penitence that reaches this? Yes, it is ideal. Such 
penitence our experience does not know. And yet after 
all we are only pointing to something, the process and 
the tendency of which we do know well. We may not 
think that, within our present experience, that tendency 
can ever reach its climax. But however incomplete it 
may remain within experience, the tendency at least 


40 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cMAP. 


is unmistakably there. The past guilt can, and does, 
even in the case of such penitence as our experience 
has seen and known, have manifestly less and less of 
present reality in the man. 

All penitence, no doubt, that we ever have known is 
imperfect. But to what does this innate, and progressive, 
tendency of even imperfect penitence bear witness? Does 
it not testify to the ideal, if unattained, possibility of a 
penitence so unreserved, so perfect, so Divine, as—not 
to constitute indeed a breach in personal self-identity, 
but to make a contrast of such vital moment between the 
past and present truth of the self, that the self would 
really be no longer identified with that with which it 
really was identified ; that the dead past would, as present, 
really not be, or be only as the living antithesis to what 
it was? 

It is to ideal penitence that our thought points. But 
it is ideal penitence that we desire to think of: for we 
desire to know what penitence really is,—not penitence as 
it is imperfect, but penitence as it is penitence: that is, 
to discern what penitence would be, if only it did ever 
reach the proper culmination of that which we do 
already know in process. 

Need we ask whether, in the case of such a consum- 
mated penitence, it could still be right to inflict punish- 
ment on the penitent? We might well ask what sort 
of punishment could be inflicted? For, in one sense of 
that word, the penal discipline is even now, fully complete. 
And, in the other sense, it would now be a sacrilege to 
talk of penal vengeance. 

Is it not true that such a penitence as we have tried 
to imagine would be itself, from end to end, truly suffering, 
truly penal? Is it not the case that the inmost secret 
of the meaning of that penal discipline would be found 
to be—not a remorseless infliction of external vengeance, 


11] PENITENCE 41 


but the glory shining outwards from within, the glory 
—within the sphere and painfulness of evil—the glory 
of an inherently triumphant righteousness? And is it 
not therefore true that, in the presence of such a penitence 
in the spirit of one who had sinned, there would be in 
fact a change so profound, so essential, in the very nature 
of the self, as would be, in the sphere of divinely ideal 
truth, incompatible with vengeance,—because, through it, 
the past sin was already no part of the present at all; 
the present had, however wonderfully, come to be itself 
the supreme antithesis of the past? 

I have wished to be able to touch a point of view from 
which, under circumstances not unimaginable, that sentence 
upon the past, as part of the self, which we might call the 
sentence of absolving love, would be no less also the 
sentence of absolute righteousness and divine truth; and 
I seem to myself to discern it not by imagining conditions 
wholly unrelated with experience, but by imagining rather 
a completed development of tendencies which, even within 
experience, I do recognize amongst the wonders of the 
penitent life. . 

In the light of these thoughts it is not too much to 
say that penitence, if only it were quite perfect, would 
mean something more like, at least, than we could, apart 
from experience of penitence, even conceive intellectually 
to be possible or thinkable, to a real undoing of the past; 
—a real killing out and eliminating of the past from the 
present “me.” Penitence is really restorative. Its tendency 
is towards what might truly be called “redeeming” or 
“atoning.” It would really mean in me, if only it could 
be consummated quite perfectly, a real re-identification 
with the Law and the Life of righteousness. 

Unfortunately, a penitence such as this will be felt 
to be, after all, more ideal than actual; an imagination 
not a possibility. It is a reasonable imagination because 


42 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (cHap. 


it is in accordance with—not against—what experience 
bears witness to; but it is none the less not a practical 
possibility. Nay—the more clearly I discern what would 
be the supreme reality of penitence, the more does my very 
insight compel me to recognize the inherent impossibility 
of its consummation. 

That penitence—that transformation of moral character 
—should be possible at a//, is a marvel, requiring to be 
accounted for. But a penitence so ideal, a change of 
character so absolute, as we have imagined, a severance 
from the past so complete, that the past would leave no 
scar, and have no place, of guilt or of power, in the 
present personality at all; if it is on the one hand an 
element, and a necessary element, in spiritual aspiration 
and belief, is, on the other hand, definitely beyond the 
limit of this world’s completed experience. No one, in 
this life, having sinned, is ever altogether as if he had not. 

And why is it inherently impossible? Just because 
the sin is already within the conscience: and the 
presence of sin in the conscience, if on one side it 
constitutes the need, and may incite to the desire, of 
penitence, on the other is itself a bar to the possibility 
of repenting. The sinfulness, being of the self, has blunted 
the self’s capacity for entire hatred of sin, and has blunted 
it once for all. I can be frightened at my sin; I can 
cry out passionately against it. But not the tyranny only, 
or the terror, or the loathing, but also the love of it and 
the power of it are wzthzn me. The reality of sin in the © 
self blunts the self’s power of utter antithesis against sin. _ 
Just because it now is part of what I am, I cannot, even 
though I would, wholly detest it. It is I who chose and 
enjoyed the thing that was evil: and I, as long as I live, 
retain not the memory only but the capacity, the personal 
affinity, for the evil taste still; as the penitent drunkard or 
gambler is conscious in himself, as long as he lives, of the 


eT ¥\) > 
a 2 
ss) ~ 5 


11.) PENITENCE 43 


latent possibility within himself—not of drinking only or 
of gambling, but alas! of passionately enjoying the evil 
thing. And this is true in a measure of all sin. The more 
I have been habituated to sinning, the feebler is my 
capacity of contrition. But even once to have sinned 
is to have lost once for all its ideal perfectness. It is sin, 
as sin, which blunts the edge, and dims the power, of 
penitence. < 

But if the perfect identification of being with righteous- ~ 
ness which perfect consummation of penitence would 
necessarily mean, is zso facto impossible to one who has 
sinned, just because the sin is really his own: what is this 
but to say—hardly even in other words—that the personal 


- identity with righteousness in condemnation and detesta- 


tion of sin, which penitence in ideal perfection would mean 
and be,—is possible only to One who is personally Himself 
without sin? The consummation of penitential holiness,— 
itself, by inherent character, the one conceivable atonement 
for sin,—would be possible only to the absolutely sinless. 
We are not concerned, here and now, with the other 
side of the question—How it is possible for the absolutely 
sinless, to have, or to take, such personal relation to sin 
that His inherent holiness could really be, and really suffer 
as being, penztential holiness. Weare discussing at present 
no further problems beyond the one single question—what 
it is, on scrutiny, that penitence, as penitence, requires and 
is. And the more we try to run back to the root of the 
matter, the more we shall find our thought tied up to this 


-irresistible—if paradoxical—truth: that a true penitence is 


as much the inherent impossibility, as it is the inherent 


necessity, of every man that has sinned. 


Need we go on to ask, under pressure of our own logic, 
why it does not follow forthwith—as, first, that adequate 
penitence is impossible, fundamentally, for every one: so, 
secondly, that the more each man has sinned, the less he 


44 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP, 


need dream of penitence ; for that penitence, hopeless from 
the first, is more and more progressively impossible, just in 
precise proportion as it is more necessary? 

The fact is, we have said already too much—or too 
little. It is easy, perhaps, to prove our impossibility of 
penitence. There is no marvel in that. Those who find 
spiritual analogies in natural things are nowhere apt to be 
baffled so much as here. Penitence seems like a reversal of 
all analogies. It is a standing miracle in human life. But 
be the marvel what it may of its origin or possibility, it is at 
least undeniable among the experiences of the spiritual 
life. The proof of its impossibility, however logically 
simple, would find its disproof in every personal conscious- 
ness. It would not only darken the brightness of our sky. 
It would stultify almost everything that we have ever 
known to be true. It would cross out not only future 
hope; but all the deepest realities of experience. The 
logical proof would really prove too much. It would 
really cut us off—not only from the ideal consummation, 
but from any reality, of penitence at all! 

Considering, indeed, of what quality penitence is, it is 
perhaps the greatest miracle of experience that any reality 
of penitence should be possible at all. And yet, possible 
or impossible, there it is—the most familiar, as well as the 
_most profound, and transcendent, of spiritual experiences 
Are not all the annals of Christian consciousness full, from 
end to end, of penitence? And this penitence, this 
marvellous possibility, which so transcends, yet interprets, 
we might almost say constitutes, Christian experience ; this 
penitence which is almost another word for spiritual con- 
sciousness, do we not recognize it at once as more than 
humanly profound and tranquillizing? as beautiful almost 
beyond all experience of beauty? as powerful, even to the 
shattering of the most terrible of powers ? 

Inversion of natural history,— moral recovery, — re- 


I1.] PENITENCE 45 


identifying of the sinner’s spirit with holiness; so that 
he can at all really hate what really was the old self, and 
cling, through voluntary pain, to a real contradiction of 
the self: the touching beauty, which as beauty is un- 
surpassed, the tremendous spiritual and _ spiritually 
uplifting force, of the penitence of countless souls— 
men and women, boys and girls,—since the Kingdom 
of Christ began: what is it? or whence is it?—this im- 
possibility in them, which is nevertheless a fact? This 
humiliation, which is so exquisite a grace? This weakness 
confessed, which is so paradoxically sovereign in power? 
This upon earth, which is so incommensurate with earth? 

This at least we may say about it: that it is no natural 
possibility,—it is not of themselves. There was that within 
themselves which witnessed for it, which needed it, which 
could correspond with it: but it was not, and could not 
have been originated, within themselves. Necessary as it 
was for themselves, it was yet, from the side of themselves, 
an unqualified impossibility. 

And yet again, though not of themselves, it is by far the 
deepest truth of themselves. If not of, it is zz, them: and 
when in them, it is the very reality of what they are,—the 
central core and essence of their own effective personality. 
Though it cries aloud in them that it is not of them; 
though it utterly transcends and transfigures them ; yet is it 
more, after all, the very central truth of themselves than 
all else that they have themselves ever done or been. 

In saying this, we are in part anticipating thoughts which 
lie beyond the range of our present subjects. 

But it is well to say at once that it is precisely the 
impossible which has been, and is, and is to be, the real. 
What is precisely impossible in respect of ourselves, is 
exactly real in the Church—the breath of whose life is the 
Spirit of Jesus Christ. 

Men do not always understand the depth of what 


46 ATONEMENT. AND PERSONALITY [cHAaP. 


penitence means, because their conceptions of penitence 


are based so often upon its imperfectness or its failure. So 
they have been content to feel that they felt sorry ; content 
if their sorrow had carried them to some little touch 
of shame or suffering. They have hardly perhaps even 
aimed at an attitude towards sin—towards themselves 
as wilfully characterized by sin,—which would be nothing 
less than that inexorable condemnation which must be the 
attitude towards sin of the eternal Righteousness. Perhaps 
the least glimpse of the real meaning of penitence is at 
once confounding and inspiring. The true penitent con- 
demns and loathes sin, even in himself, not with a foolish 
shallow, half-insincere regret, but as God loathes and 
condemns it. 

After all, then, this penitence in the hearts of the 
penitent, of which we cannot but say things so para- 
doxical,—what is it, or from whence? It is the real 
echo,—the real presence—in their spirit, of Spirit; 
Spirit, not their own, as if of themselves; yet their very 
own, for more and more that Spirit dominates them and 
constitutes them what they are. It is, in them, the Spirit 
of human contrition, of human atonement; the Spirit of 
Holiness triumphing over sin, and breaking it, within the 
kingdom of sin; the Spirit at once of Calvary and of 
Pentecost; the Spirit, if not of the Cross yet of the 
Crucified, who conquered and lived through dying. 

It is only thus, only from hence, that the least reality of 
penitence is possible at all. But this we may add in con- 
clusion,—that the reality of the penitence which is so 
familiar in Christian experience (if it may not be said to 
constitute Christian experience) is itself a guarantee of the 
possibility—nay more, of the certain realization,—of per- 
fectly consummated penitence. For, after all, this 
penitence which is so familiar in Christian experience, may 
truly perhaps be called,—wonder for wonder—an even 


1.) PENITENCE 47 


greater miracle, than, in comparison with it, the most ideal 
perfection of penitence would be. 

Is it not the Spirit of the Crucified which is the reality 
of the penitence of the really penitent? Only there remains 
to the end this one immovable distinction. 'What was, in 
Him, the triumph of His own inherent and unchanging 
righteousness, is in them the consummation of a gradual 
process of change from sin to abhorrence and contradiction 
of sin. They are changed. But the fact of changedness 
remains. Unaided, of themselves, they did not conquer, 
and could not have conquered, sin. Nor do they so grow 
into oneness of Spirit with Him as to cease to be them- 
selves, who had sinned and are redeemed from sin. 
That past, which would have made their own penitence an 
impossibility, though no longer a living present, as 
character or as power, within themselves, is yet present 
with them just so far as this,—that they are still, though 
sinless in the Spirit of the Sinless, yet not simply sinless, 
but brought to sinlessness out of sin; not simply pure but 
purified; not simply blessed but beatified; not simply 
holy but redeemed. The song of eternal praise is in their 
hearts, as of those who are eternally “the Redeemed,”— 
towards one who is none the less eternally their Redeemer, 
because—no longer without but within themselves,—He is 
their own capacity of responsive holiness ; “for Thou wast 
slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of 
every tribe and tongue and people and nation ;”—“ worthy 
is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and 
riches, and might, and glory, and blessing ;”—“ Unto Him 
that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the 
blessing, and the nce and the glory, and the ie ag 
for ever and ever.” 


CHAPTER III 
FORGIVENESS 


THERE can be no question at all as to the exceeding 
prominence of the part, in the Christian religion, which 
belongs to forgiveness. For ourselves, as we look to God- 
ward, it is the hope, and the faith, without which all else 
would be to us as nothing. The simplest form of the 
universal faith is incomplete without this——‘I believe in 
the forgiveness of sins.” The primary type of the 
universal prayer lays exceptional emphasis upon this,— 
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that 
trespass against us.” In this form of prayer we have 
already passed from the thought of forgiveness as being, 
to Godward, our essential hope, to the thought of for- 
giveness as being, to manward, our indispensable duty. 
It is, characteristically, both. It is a duty towards men 
which, almost more than any other duty, stamps those who 
realize and fulfil it best, with the distinctive seal of the 
Spirit of the Christ. And it is a hope which may be said 
—intelligibly, at least, if not with theological exactness— 
to sum up all the aspiration and desire of Christians, “I 
acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins” is, in 
its way, a description of the Christian calling as a whole, 
“Thy sins be forgiven thee,’ spoken unerringly by the 
voice of Divine truth and love, comes very near to the 
consummation of all human yearning. In either aspect, 
as primey moral duty, or as primary spiritual hope, it 





CHAP, III.] FORGIVENESS 49 


stands plainly in the forefront of all that our Christianity 
means to us. In our creeds, in our prayers, in our teaching 
of others, in our hopes or fears for ourselves, few ideas, if 
any, are, or can be, more prominent than such as are repre- 
sented to men’s thought by that familiar and fundamental 
phrase, the “forgiveness of sins.” Without it Christian 
morality would be destroyed. Without it Christian faith 
would be annulled. Directly or indirectly, by conscious 
effort or by conscious default, it is everywhere, upon our 
lips, in our thoughts, in our lives. And yet; is it so 
absolutely clear—I do not say whether forgiveness is to us, 
after all, an assured or familiar experience, but whether we 
even know what we mean by forgiveness ? 

What is forgiveness? Are we perfectly sure that, upon 
analysis, we shall be found to be attaching to that most 
familiar word, any defensible or adequate—or indeed any 
consistent or intelligible—meaning at all? 

We begin with some obvious experiments, bearing not 
so immediately upon the grounds for the doctrine, as upon 
the meaning of the word. A child comes before parent or 
master for punishment, and the master lets him go free. 
The slave insults, or tries to strike, his lord; and the lord 
refrains from either penalty or reproach. In cases like 
these, if we speak (as we well may) of forgiveness, there is 
no doubt what we most immediately mean. We mean that 
a certain penalty is not inflicted. Is this, then, what for- 
giveness means? A remission of penalty? a forbearing to 
punish? ‘This is, we may believe, quite genuinely, the first 
and simplest form in which forgiveness (whatever it may 
at last be found to mean) begins to make itself intelligible. 
It would be a great mistake to brush aside with contempt 
the idea of forgiveness as remission of penalty. It really 
is in this form that it first comes home to the consciousness 
of the child. It may fairly be presumed that it was in this 
form that it first came home to the child-like consciousness 

D 


5° ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


of the race. It may even be doubted, perhaps, whether 
those who have not first felt something of it in this form 
are likely to get much further towards the understanding 
of it at all. 

We shall notice indeed that forgiveness cannot be ap- 
prehended even in this form, until certain earlier conceptions 
have been obtained. I cannot really feel myself excused 
from punishment, until I first feel that I have deserved to 
be punished ; until (that is) I have some idea both of wrong 
as wrong, and of the distress of punishment, and of that 
righteousness which is expressed in punishment of wrong. 
But we need hardly now go further back than the concep- 
tion of forgiveness as remission of punishment. 

Important, however, as it is to recognize this conception 
as a necessary stage, and true in its degree, in the process 
of gradually learning what forgiveness means ; it will never 
do to rest here. The theology which allows itself to be 
entangled in a theory of forgiveness of which the leading 
character is remission of penalty, will by and by (as nota 
few attempts to explain the doctrine of the atonement 
have shown) be landed in insoluble perplexities. Indeed 
we may perhaps broadly say that forgiveness cannot really 
mean as much as this without meaning more. The mind 
cannot really grasp this explanation without becoming, more 
or less explicitly, conscious that what it really means by the 
word has already transcended the limits of this explana- 
tion. If, at a certain stage, the explanation was ¢rue, yet 
it dimly implied, even then, a good deal beyond itself. 
And what was once, in its own way, really true, becomes 
by degrees, to a maturer consciousness, so inadequate, that 
if pressed now as an adequate statement of truth, it carries 
with it all the effect—not merely of incompleteness but of 
untruth. 

The explanation does not say enough. Whatever 
place remission of penalty may have in forgiveness, we 








111] FORGIVENESS 51 


all feel that reality of forgiveness contains a great deal 
beyond this. “I will not punish you,—but I can never 
forgive,” may be an immoral, but is not, on the face of 
it, a self-contradictory, position. I at least cam hate the 
man whom I would not hurt. Again the explanation 
says too much. There may be such a thing as infliction 
of penalty which does not contradict—which may be 
even said to express—forgiveness. But in any case, the 
simple idea of not punishing is too negative and external 
to touch the real core of the matter. 

But there is another reason, more directly to our 
purpose, why forgiveness cannot be defined as remission 
of penalty. Such a definition would blur all distinction 
of right and wrong. Remission of penalty, as such, 
requires an explanation and a justification: and according 
to the explanation which justifies it, the character of not 
punishing varies infinitely. Now if I speak of forgiveness 
as a property of God, or a duty for man, I am speaking 
of something essentially virtuous and good: not of some- 
thing which may be either good or the extreme antithesis 
of goodness. I cannot admit either that forgiveness is 
an immoral action, or that an immoral action can be 
_ forgiveness. Remission of penalty must have a justifica- 
tion. If it has no justification, it is simply immoral. I 
cannot, for the forgiveness of the creed, or of the Lord’s 
prayer, accept a definition which leaves the question still 
open, whether forgiveness is not the exact contradiction 
of righteousness. If this man is guilty of a heartless 
betrayal, and another of a dastardly murder, and a third 
it may be of an outrage more dastardly than murder; 
and I, having absolute power, use that power only to 
remit the punishments wholesale, without other purpose 
or ground except remission regarded as an end in itself: 
I am so far from illustrating the. righteous forgiveness 
of God, that I do but commit a fresh outrage against 


52 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


righteousness, in itself as cowardly as it is immoral. 
Thought is only misled by a use of the word which includes 
at once its truth and its caricature. The so-called forgive- 
ness which is itself an infamy,—which, in condoning sin, 
gives the lie to righteousness,—has nothing in common, 
except mere delusiveness of outward appearance, with 
the truth of forgiveness. It may look like it in the 
negative fact of not-punishing, or in the outward gesture 
and appearance of embracing; but its whole reality of 
meaning is different. There may be travesties, or imita- 
tions, more or less resembling forgiveness. But there is 
only one true meaning of the word: and that is the for- 
giveness not of ignorance or of levity, but of righteousness 
and truth. The only real forgiveness is the forgiveness 
of God,—reproduced in man just so far as man, in God’s 
Spirit, righteously forgives; but caricatured by man, so 
far as man, otherwise than righteously, does the things 
which travesty and dishonour forgiveness, sparing penalty 
and foregoing displeasure—when righteousness does not. 
“ Neither doth he abhor anything that is evil” is a terrible 
condemnation of the man who is ready to forgive every- 
thing alike. Forgiveness does not equally mean the truth 
and the travesty. Its definition cannot be found in terms 
merely of remission of pain or of anger, irrespective of 
the verdict of righteousness. When, and so far as, it is 
remission at all, it is remission Jecause vemission ts 
righteous. It is the Divine reality—in God or in man. 

We are hampered no doubt by words. But just as 
with the word “love,” while we cannot altogether help 
verbally using it for that yearning of person towards 
person which hideously travesties the true spirit of love, 
we yet educate ourselves towards true insight of soul 
by protesting that this is the libel not the truth, nor part 
of the truth, of what love really means; so also with the 
word forgiveness. If we cannot wholly avoid the use 





11} FORGIVENESS : 53 


of the word of those who “forgive” unrighteously, yet 
must we maintain that clear insight of spirit into truth 
can only be won by refusing to let such caricature of 
forgiveness colour our central conception of what real 
forgiveness is. 

But if, on such grounds, we pass beyond the thought 
of forgiveness as not-punishing,—does it mend matters 
to try and increase (as it were) the content of the word, 
and say that it means a complete ignoring of guilt; a 
sort of make-believe that those who are guilty are not 
guilty? Such a view will have, no doubt, its relation to 
truth. To treat those who have done wrong as they 
would have been treated if they had not done wrong, 
is often a real element in the restorative character of 
forgiveness. But it will not do as an account of what 
forgiveness means. On the one side, it too does not 
yet say enough. On the other, it too depends for its 
moral justifiableness, on something as yet unexpressed. 
Forgiveness that is at all completely realized is something 
much deeper in character,—something altogether unlike, 
a mere treating as 7£ To treat a culprit as if he were 
better than he is, however important it may be experi- 
mentally, is in any case a means to an end. And its 
provisional character is enough to show that it is at best 
incomplete as an account of what forgiveness means, 
Moreover, even as a provisional experiment it needs to 
be justified. To treat a culprit as if he were innocent 
may soruetimes be an intolerable wrong. To treat a 
culprit as if he were innocent, may sometimes be as an 
inspiration of the wisdom—the surpassing wisdom— 
of love like the love of God. What makes the difference 
between the one case and the other? Is it not plain that 
the righteousness of such treatment has relation to some- 
thing in the personality of the culprit himself. It may 
not depend on the magnitude of his past fault; but it 


54 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHapP. 


sertainly depends upon something in his personal character 
now; something in him (whether we say of present fact 
or of future possibility) which makes it what it is. Such 
treatment in him has an eye to his restoration to 
righteousness, and whatever restoration to righteousness 
in him would mean. It is relative to that in him which 
may be described as his possibility, or the reasonable 
hope of his possibility, of a real restoration. Such a hope 
may be remote. But however remote it may be, its 
reality is an absolutely essential ingredient in the mean- 
ing of treating him as guiltless, if such treatment is to 
deserve, for an instant, the name of forgiveness. Apart 
from this it would be not forgiveness but sin. 

This becomes, I think, plainer still, if we carry our 
thoughts of the contents of forgiveness one step further ; 
and say that in its fulness it would mean not only that we 
treated the culprit as if he were innocent in our outward 
behaviour, but that we really thought and felt towards him 
with all that undimmed fulness of reverent love which 
would have belonged to him as righteous and loving. For 
such a conception of forgiveness, while it does, for the first 
time, get rid of the sense of inadequacy which attached to 
all that was suggested before; does also bring out into 
sharp relief that moral confusedness which must inhere in 
every attempted definition of forgiveness—must inhere in 
it even in proportion to its adequacy—as long as we 
attempt to explain forgiveness abstractly or externally ; to 
explain it, that is, by the action or the sentiment of the 
forgiver, otherwise than in direct relation to that, in the 
personality of the forgiven, which gives to the act of the 
forgiver all its character and meaning. Forgiveness is not 
a transaction which can be taken by itself and stated as it 
were in terms of arithmetic. It is an attitude of a person 
to aperson. It can only be understood in terms of person- 
ality. I cannot forgive a river or a tree. I cannot forgive 


r1.J FORGIVENESS 55 


an animal except just so far as I do (whether rightly or 
wrongly) recognise in it the attributes of a rational soul ; 
if I forgive a man, it is in relation to the meaning of 
that man’s personality—its complex present, its immense 
possible future—that all which I do in the act of forgiving 
finds at once its justification and its explanation. 

But the more we deepen the content of the word forgive- 
ness ; the more we realize that forgiveness, however other- 
wise guarded or conditioned, is going to contain, on any 
terms at all, such elements as personal reverence or love; 
the more does the question begin to press upon us, whether 
we can, or dare, at all largely forgive. Ifa man treats me 
and mine with outrageous wickedness: it is possible per- 
haps to imagine that I may be right in not trying to bring 
punishment upon him, but on what possible warrant can I 
look on him with reverence or love? If I pronounce such 
actions and character good, nay if I do not unfalteringly 
condemn them as with the eternal sentence of God against 
evil: I do but, in wanton self-identification with his sin, 
make myself a renegade to righteousness. 

The more we think over it, the more we realize that 
when we talk of human forgiveness as a duty, or Divine 
forgiveness as our faith and hope; the forgiveness which 
we mean is so intimately bound up with, so essentially de- 
pendent upon, those grounds within the personality of the 
forgiven which justify it; that we cannot, apart from them, 
even apprehend aright what the nature of the thing itself 
is. Forgiveness is, in part, a remitting of punishment. It 
is in part a treating, nay even a recognising, of the person 
forgiven as. good: and yet it is no one of these things 
simpliceter, by itself. It is no one of them apart from that 
justifying cause, within the personality of the forgiven, which 
makes this treatment, and recognition, not unrighteous but 
righteous. God does not, in fact, remit penalty: He does 
not in fact justify, or pronounce righteous, except in relation 


56 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP 


to something, on the part of the forgiven, which both vindi- 
cates the righteousness of His act, and explains the meaning 
of it. God’s forgiveness is never simply unconditional. 

And as God’s is not, so we recognise after all that man’s is 
not tobe. In one direction it is true that it is to be infinite 
“T say not unto thee until seven times but until seventy 
times seven.”! Yet even this must be read in the light of 
that proviso which our Lord’s words no less explicitly 
contain ; “If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, 
forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in the 
day, and seven times turn again to thee saying I repent; 
thou shalt forgive him.”2 Forgiveness, then, if it is to be 
the truth and not the imitation of forgiveness (for even the 
imitation of forgiveness has its place in the complexities of 
human life) but if it is to be not the imitation but the truth; 
if it is to be that real forgiveness which is the spontaneous 
action of righteousness, and not that indifference to sin 
which is itself a new sin; is strictly and absolutely correla- 
tive to what may be called the “forgiveableness” of the 
person forgiven. 

Now whatever forgiveableness in him may turn out to 
mean: there are one or two conclusions which will follow 
at once from the proposition that forgiveness is correlative 
to forgiveableness. Thus: true forgiveness is never capri- 
cious: it is never arbitrary: we may even say it is never 
properly optional. True forgiveness is an act—or rather 
an attitude—not more of love than it is of righteousness 
and of truth. Truth and righteousness are not in contra- 
diction against love. They are love. God who is Love, is 
Righteousness and Truth. God who is Righteousness and 
Truth, is Love. Truth, Righteousness, Love, cannot be 
capricious or arbitrary. 

There is no arbitrary variation in the forgiveness of God 
Whether He forgives a man or not, depends wholly and 
only upon whether the man is or is not forgiveable. He 


1 Mat. xviii. 22. ? Luke xvii. 4. 





111.] FORGIVENESS 57 


who can be forgiven by Love and Truth, zs forgiven by Love 
and Truth—instantly, absolutely, without failure or doubt. 
And as, in God, forgiveness, upon the necessary conditions, 
so acts as if it were self-acting ; so would it also in me, in 
proportion to my perfectness of knowledge and character ; 
for Righteousness, Truth and Love, are not capricious. 
I indeed may fall short of them, retaining my anger after 
they have forgiven: or I may run too fast for them, forgiving 
(as I call it) while they still are displeased ; but they are 
sure and exact and unfailing and immutable; for they ave 
Righteousness and Love and Truth. Again, I may often 
be puzzled as to how far I ought, or ought not, to forgive. 
But this is only because I do not know. Iam not able, in 
my ignorance, to discern whether such an one is rightly 
forgiveable, orno. But if my knowledge were adequate, 
there would be no residuum of mere option. Either 
he is forgiveable, or he is not. So far as he is not I ought 
not to forgive. But so far as he is, I ought. There is no 
stage really in which, at my option, he both may, and yet 
may not, be forgiven. If I may forgive, I must. A man 
does me terrible wrong. Suppose for one moment, that he 
is absolutely perfect in penitence. Yet I will not forgive. 
Then the sin, which was on his side, has gone over to mine. 
So far as I was identified with righteousness and truth, I 
should—not perhaps but inevitably—have forgiven. My 
non-forgiveness is my deflection from righteousness and 
truth. Or, on the other hand, one for whom I am respon- 
sible, defies all right, and exults in his defiance. And I, 
refusing to punish, receive him with open arms as righteous 
and good. Then, in still more directness of sense, the sin, 
without ceasing to be on his side, has come over to mine, 
I have but identified myself with his wickedness. In pro- 
portion as he is identified with wickedness, truth and 
righteousness pronounce him wicked ; and my acceptance 
of the wicked as righteous is my deflection from righteous- 
ness and truth. If, then, there is no true forgiveness but 


58 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


the forgiveness of righteousness and truth; and if this for- 
giveness is sure, invariable, even (as it were) self-acting,— 
in God, and in man too, just so far as man is identified 
with righteousness and truth; we are thrown back more 
than ever, in desiring to understand what forgiveness 
means, upon that condition in the personality of the 
forgiven, upon which the righteousness of his forgiveness 
depends. 

But when we venture to give to the word forgiveness 
any meaning of this character at all, we are met, no doubt, 
by one or two very real difficulties of thought. Thus the 
question suggests itself, if forgiveness (with whatever 
provisoes) is made to be simply correlative to forgiveable- 
ness; and if to say that a man is forgiveable means not 
merely that he may be, but therefore z/so facto that he 
ought to be, nay must be, forgiven: if forgiveness, that is, 
is a sort of automatic and necessary consequence of a 
certain condition of the culprit’s personality ; are you not 
exactly taking out of forgiveness all that it ever had 
distinctively meant? Are you not precisely and completely 
explaining it away? When you say you forgive, you 
are merely recognizing the growth towards righteousness 
of those who are already becoming righteous. You may 
call it forgiving only those who deserve to be forgiven. 
Is it really more than this, that you acknowledge the 
goodness of the good; or, at all events, the imperfect 
goodness of the incompletely good? You merely do 
not continue to condemn those who no longer ought 
to be condemned? So far as they are still wicked, you 
refuse to forgive them. So far as they are becoming 
righteous, they do not need any act of yours to forgive 
them. In other words, there is no place left for forgive- 
ness. Ejitner, in accordance with truth, you still condemn. 
Or else, in accordance with truth, you acquit and accept. 
Where does forgiveness come in? Justice this may be. 


nt] FORGIVENESS 59 


But has not forgiveness, as forgiveness, dropped out 
altogether? Either there is nothing that can be called 
forgiveness at all; or, if there is, it is a forgiveness which 
can be said to have been, by deserving, “earned”: and 
is not forgiveness that is earned exactly not forgiveness ? 
We must be content to make, for the present, 
suggestions towards the answer to this question, in two 
somewhat different ways. This first: that words like 
“earning” or “deserving” are, in any case, unfair words. 
They are unfair because they imply that the condition 
of the personality which can be said, in any sense, to 
deserve forgiveness, is a condition which is originated 
by, and for which the credit is primarily due to, the 
person in whom it is found. But if that condition of the 
personality of the culprit, which is capable of responding 
to forgiveness, and to which forgiveness is correlative ; 
if the germinal possibilities of penitence in him, should be 
found, after all, to be due, in their first origins, to the 
loving righteousness,—not his nor of himself,—which is 
working for him to produce in him that forgiveableness 
which it will forthwith meet with the embrace of forgive- 
ness: then it may be that this not unnatural attempt to 
show that a forgiveness which is perfectly righteous involves 
a contradiction in terms, will be found to break down after 
all. We do not, in our view of forgiveness, undervalue 
the freedom and completeness of the action of God’s love, 
or overvalue the power of man’s initiative, in the mystery 
of atoning redemption. That at least is a charge to which 
we have no occasion to plead guilty. Had we laid down 
that human capacity of penitence, even in its faintest and 
most germinal beginnings, began from man’s self, or be- 
longed to his natural powers, such a charge might con- 
ceivably lie. But any such suggestion is incompatible 
with the whole scope of our argument. Meanwhile, what- 
ever we may have further to suggest in relation to the 


6a ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


possibilities of penitence, we can hardly be wrong in 
insisting on the mutual relation between penitence and 
pardon: penitence, so far as it is penitence, never, by 
any possibility, failing of pardon; pardon being essentially 
that Divine acceptance,—nay anticipation, in acceptance, 
of the first divinely enabled identification of the 
personality with any raovement towards penitence, in 
the light and warmth whereof alone the plant of penitence 
can grow or bear fruit. 

And secondly, leaving for the moment the abstract 
difficulty, we must ask whether, after all, it does not, 
for whatever it is worth, attach on any shewing, to any 
explanation of forgiveness which we can by any possibility 
accept: to any forgiveness, that is, which is not self- 
condemned as arbitrary and unrighteous, but is, or can 
possibly be, the act of God, who is unchanging righteous- 
ness and truth. If there are times when it seems that 
forgiveness would lose all its meaning if it could be called 
the necessary act of righteousness as righteousness; it 
is certain, on the other hand, that we cannot really save 
the idea of forgiveness, by making it either not the act 
of righteousness, or the act of righteousness not as it is 
righteous, but as it is something else, not ultimately 
identical with righteousness. 

Yet even this instinct against which we are arguing 
represents a truth. That truth is exhibited to us, with 
a terrible emphasis, in the parable of the unforgiving 
servant. The most obvious teaching of that parable is 
that the fullest forgiveness of God towards man, in the 
conditions of the present life, is provisional, and may 
be revoked and reversed. This is one characteristic of 
forgiveness, as we have known it, upon which it is well] 
to lay stress. As there is, upon earth, no consummated 
penitence, so neither is there any forgiveness consummated. 

The forgiveness which we receive in the Church upon 


111.] FORGIVENESS 6x 


earth,—in baptism, in absolution, and so forth,—takes for 
granted, and is dependent on, certain conditions. It is 
the recognition, by anticipation, of something which is 
to be, something towards which it is itself a mighty 
quickening of possibilities; but something which is not, 
or at least is not perfectly, yet. Present forgiveness is 
inchoate, is educational: it is the recognition indeed of 
something in the present,—but a something whose real 
significance lies in the undeveloped possibilities of the 
future; a something which is foreseen, and is to be realized, 
but which, in the actual personality, is not realized as yet. 

Earthly forgiveness—real in the present, but real as 
inchoate and provisional—only reaches its final and perfect 
consummation then, when the forgiven penitent—largely 
through the softening and enabling grace of progressively 
realized forgiveness—has become at last personally and 
completely righteous. It is not consummated perfectly 
till the culprit zs righteous: and love does but pour itself 
out to welcome and to crown what is already the verdict 
of righteousness and truth. 

Meanwhile the living power of God’s forgiveness in 
the present life grows more and more towards that con- 
summation. But,—if the consummation be never reached; 
if the growth towards it be broken, and the conditions 
necessary for it rebelled against, and the personal progress 
turned into a progress in and towards unrighteousness: 
then that which had been forgiveness, inchoate, provisional, 
educational,—is forfeited and is reversed. It is not that it 
was unreal from the first. It was forgiveness, received 
and, in a measure, realized as such. But this is just the 
point of the catastrophe. The very realization of the 
provisional forgiveness, in proportion as it was realized, 
turns into the material of the condemnation, “Thou 
wicked servant, I forgave thee,” that is the point of guilt 
—the forfeited forgiveness zs the fatal wickedness—-“ and 


62 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors 
till he should pay all that was due. So shall also my 
heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every 
one his brother from your hearts,” ? 

The forgiveness, if its consummation be rebelled 
against, becomes, in itself, condemnation. On the other 
hand, if and when its consummation is perfectly reached 
—“Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into 
the joy of thy lord”—the forgiveness may be said to be 
wholly merged in the glad welcome of an undimmed love. 
It is, then, of forgiveness not yet consummated, but 
inchoate and provisional: perhaps we should rather say 
it is of Love in its provisional and anticipatory stage,— 
recognising possibilities not yet realized, and by this 
anticipatory recognition marvellously quickening them ; 
it is of Divine Love at this stage, and under these con- 
ditions, that we do characteristically use the word “ forgive- 
ness.” There is no difference at all between Divine 
forgiveness and Divine love; save in the atmosphere of 
conditions around and through which it is for the present 
working. Forgiveness zs love, in its relation to a person- 
ality which, having sinned, is learning, and to learn, what 
the sin-consciousness of penitence means. 

In this sense the instinct which would shrink from re- 
garding forgiveness as a necessity of righteousness may, in 
part, be justified. Love is a necessity of righteousness ; 
and forgiveness only is an aspect of love. But love wears 
the form, and carries the name, of forgiveness—in its antici- 
patory and provisional relation to the penitent. We do 
call love forgiveness just when, and just because, the peni- 
tent, whose very life it is, yet makes and can make no claim 
to deserving it. In this sense it may still perhaps even be 
true that forgiveness is correlative to non-deserving. But 
love, under the conditions, could not ot have forgiven, 

1 Mat. xviii. 32-35. 


ML] FORGIVENESS 63 


The love forgives simply because it is love. And that for- 
giving love is the recognition, and becomes the possibility, 
of a personal righteousness in the penitent which still only 
is possible in him, in proportion as it is quite completely, 
and sincerely, disclaimed. 

But it is to be remembered that the parable of the un- 
forgiving servant, if it teaches on one side that the forgive- 
ness of God is provisional, and thereby contributes not a 
little to our understanding of the nature of Divine forgive- 
ness ; is also, in its outcome, directed to the lesson of the 
human duty of forgiving. It emphasizes, with most per- 
emptory insistence, the indispensable necessity of learning, 
on earth, to forgive. Now it is true that what has hitherto 
been said has been far away from all the scenery, and the 
problems, of human forgiveness. But it is necessary, not 
only that the forgiveness of man by man, as a primary duty 
of the Christian life, should be understood, if the life is 
really to illustrate it; but that it should be understood in 
its relation to the thought of the forgiveness of man by 
God. Human forgiveness is to find its inspiration in man’s 
experience of the forgiveness of God. God’s forgiveness 
must find an expression of itself in man’s forgiveness of 
man. 

The first thing which we have to do, in turning from 
divine to human forgiveness, is to draw certain distinctions. 
The exact lineaments of divine forgiveness could only be 
reproduced in human life quite perfectly, where the con- 
ditions were analogous. They are never quite perfectly 
analogous between man and man. Nevertheless, the 
analogy is so immeasurably more complete in some cases 
than in others, that it is well to distinguish, and to con- 
sider first the instances in which that analogy most 
approaches to being perfect. The nearest approach is to 
be found in the relation between a parent and a very 
young child. Only through the thought of what forgive- 


64 ~' ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaAP 


ness in the parent means can we quite grasp what it 
ought to be as towards the criminal who has brutally 
injured us. 

Think, then, of the attitude of a parent, patient, loving, 
and wise, in dealing with the naughtiness of a little child. 
The first thing which is obvious is that the parent loves the 
child anyhow. His whole treatment of the child, from the 
beginning of the matter to the end, may be described, not 
unaptly, as the process of the wise diplomacy of love. The 
second point to notice is that, to the view of this love, the 
child is never wholly identified with his naughtiness. Love 
thinks of the child quite apart from his evil-doing, and has 
for its aim throughout the effective distinction between the 
child’s evil, and the child. Thirdly, the very love which 
sees most clearly the possibility, and aims most directly 
at the realizing, of this distinction; though waiting and 
longing every moment to forgive, yet cannot wear the 
aspect of forgiveness while the child is wholly self-identified 
with its passion. So long as this self-identification is com- 
plete, and the child rebels against every concession to 
goodness ; so long the love, just because it is love, cannot 
but continue to manifest itself as displeasure. But fourthly, 
with the first dim touch or gleam of child-like regret and 
sorrow, the love which was waiting, opens its arms as love, 
It may still be grave, it may admonish, it may discipline, 
or it may simply embrace; but whatever it does that is 
wisely and truly done, is felt as the action not of anger, 
but of love. And observe that these different attitudes are 
not optional, but necessary. Love dare not, can not—being 
love—forgive in the height of the passion, Love dare not, 
can not—being love—fail to forgive, from the moment 
when forgiveness is possible. He who affects to forgive, 
when love does not; or he who lags behind, when love has 
forgiven, transgresses at once against both love and truth. 
It is hard no doubt to be always loving and true. It is 





1.] FORGIVENESS 65 


hard to discern, and not misread, the heart of the child. 
A child sent away for disobedience, offers shyly to come 
back. Is that shyness the wistful shyness of desire? or is 
it the awkward shyness of defiance? Those who stand in 
the parent’s place, being foolish, may mistake. But upon 
the discernment of its true character, the parental duty de- 
pends. Is it wistfulness? In that wistfulness, dim, child- 
like, half-unconscious as it is, may be the true germ of 
what, in its perfected blossom, would be the outpouring of 
the confession of the penitent. It may be that that mere 
wistfulness, if met with the open-armed embrace of forgiv- 
ing love, will produce forthwith the faltering word of regret, 
or the tears without words, which are, so far, the little selfs 
true effort of repudiation of sin, and of personal allegiance 
to righteousness. 

This is, on earth, the nearest analogy by which we can 
read the working of Divine love. For the parent who is 
loving and wise, is in many respects in the place of God to 
the child. Yet even the nearest analogy falls short. For the 
most loving and the wisest of parents can never be to his 
child what God is to man. Parent and child after all, are 
inexorably distinct. The child may bear the likeness of 
the parent, in expression, in touch, in tone. By teaching, 
by example, by infection of love, the parent may so influence 
the child that we may say, not unaptly, that the parent has 
shaped the character of the child—that the child has 
caught and reflects the spirit of the parent. But press such 
words ; and after all we are speaking in metaphor. In the 
last resort it remains that the child is not the parent; and 
the parent is not the child. The spirit of the child, be the 
likeness what it may, is distinct at last from the spirit of 
the parent. Or, if not hopelessly distinct, they begin to be 
one,—not because the child grows really into the spirit of 
the parent; but in so far as both, child and parent alike, 
are in their several personalities really growing into that 

E 


66 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


oneness of the Spirit of God, which is the true xowwvia of 
the saints. 

But to return. What, in the case supposed, does the 
parent’s forgiveness mean? It is worth while to notice 
that the very meaning of the word forgiveness in such a 
case vitally depends upon the fact that the parent has com- 
plete command over the child, and has a proportionate re- 
sponsibility for the training of the child’s moral character, 
The parent’s forgiveness is something which only is possible 
to one who is absolutely ruler and judge and teacher and © 
example all in one. It is only upon the basis of all these 
things that his forgiveness can be exactly what it is, But, 
on this basis, the forgiveness really means a loving re- 
cognition and embrace, on the part of authoritative right- 
eousness, of the first beginning or desire, within the child, 
towards that condemnation of sin in the self, which is 
the form through which a personality in which sin is in- 
herent, can become at all again identified with righteous- 
ness. And such forgiveness is the sunshine in which 
character grows. Even in the case of the parent and the 
child there is a sense, though a limited one, in which that 
earliest movement of desire within the child may be itself a 
result of what the parent is; an effect, or echo, of dimly 
felt love, not its own. We do not quite know how far it 
may be sometimes literally true, that it was really the good- 
ness and love of the parent which, in the child who reflects 
the parent’s character and influence (as his features and 
tone) constitutes the child’s own primal possibility of 
yearning or repentant love. And so far the forgiveness of 
a parent, may in God’s Spirit reflect, with wonderful near- 
ness, the meaning of God’s forgiveness of sinful man. 

But if this, among human analogies, is the nearest to 
the Divine original, it is well to make this a standard of 
comparison, and interpret others in the light of this, 

Granted that if a child comes crying to its mother, the 


II1.] FORGIVENESS 67 


mother has a duty of forgiving: what if wicked men, 
without conscience or pity, combine to do all conceivable 
violence and wrong to both child and mother? Have 
the victims of violence, as such, no duty of forgiveness ? 

Undoubtedly they have. And yet it is plain at a 
glance that the word forgiveness cannot simply be taken 
over, without variation of meaning, from the one case to 
the other. I observed just now that the ideal nature of 
a parent’s forgiveness could only be explained on the 
basis of certain assumptions involved in the truth that 
he stands in the place of God to his child. But every 
one of these assumptions must be set aside, or reversed, 
when I explain my forgiveness, as a victim, towards the 
man who treats me with outrageous wickedness. I do 
not stand to him in the place of God. I have, materially, 
no power to control his wickedness. I have no re- 
sponsibility for his moral character. I am not his judge. 
Nor have I any right—tright, that is, ultimately before 
God,—to claim as of right, immunity from being persecuted. 
What then, if I forgive him, does forgiving him mean ? 

In the first instance it means, I conceive, simply this: 
that I, being what I know myself before God to be, 
disclaim for myself any right not to suffer. It is not, 
as yet, that I am recognizing something forgiveable in 
my tormentor; it is not that I am blind for a moment 
to the horror of his wickedness; or that I should not, 
if I had the power, severely condemn and chastise it; 
but rather that I turn my face from the thought of it, 
declining to enter at all upon a iudgment in which I 
disclaim all right and all concern. He is not responsible 
tome. And therefore I turn from him, as if he were an 
irresponsible agent,—a dumb animal, or a rock, or a tree, 
which God had allowed to be to me an instrument of 
discipline. In the first instance I shut my eyes to him 
and turn simply to the thought of God and myself; 


68 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


dedicating myself in submission to the will of God. 
“As for me, I was like a deaf man, and heard not: and 
as one that is dumb, who doth not open his mouth, I 
became even as a man that heareth not: and in whose 
mouth are no reproofs. For in thee,O Lord, have I put 
my trust: Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God.”? 
“They stoned Stephen, calling upon the Lord and saying, 
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ? 

This first. But this, no doubt, is only immediate and 
preliminary. There will follow then, secondly, on this 
the one other thing which is possible, so long as he is 
obstinate in his wickedness still. This is the recognition 
that he is, after all, not a thing but a man; and that as 
a man, though self-identified with wickedness now, he 
is capable of identity with goodness. To insist on dis- 
tinguishing, in the thought of him, between what he now 
is and what he might become: to go out, in thought, in 
desire, in aspiration, in prayer, on his behalf, towards 
that restoration, in him, of the true self, for which he 
himself never dreams of praying nor hoping; to recognize 
what conceivably might be, even before it has at all begun 
to be: this so long as the man does not yet relent or 
falter in his wickedness, is all that is possible. 

This is all that is possible. But only think how much 
this means! “He kneeled down and cried with a loud 
voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when 
he had said this, he fell asleep.” Already, in these words, 
the thought of St Stephen is fixed upon the real human 
selves of his persecutors, with all their possibility of things 
divine, in utter contrast with that rebellion against light 
with which their act, in his death, was then identifying 
them: already in prayer he yearns forward towards the 
idea of such a contrast consummated and actual; and 
he who does this, does, by anticipation, all. The man 


1 Ps. xxxviii. 13-16. 2 Acts vii. 59. 





111] FORGIVENESS 69 


who dies then and there under their wickedness, cannot, 
save in desire of faith, see the after possibilities. For 
the present that desire of faith exhausts what forgiveness 
can mean. 

And so in respect of those who have wronged us in 
other ways, not unto death; while their wickedness still 
is rampant and impenitent, and we are wholly without 
power to influence them, our forgiveness takes the form 
of the consecrating of our will, the uplifting of our appeal, 
to God on their behalf. But how much this implicitly 
means becomes plainer as perhaps, in God’s providence, 
the opportunities grow. The man is arrested, for instance, 
and sentenced—to death it may be, or to imprisonment ; 
and it chances to be in our power to visit, and to talk to 
him ; and it may be by and by to give him a hand towards 
fresh possibilities. Or the man is sick, and it is in our 
power to wait on him; and sickness—or sickness and 
sympathy—help wonderfully to open his eyes. Or, with- 
out prison or sickness, things are changed with him; and 
there are, or may be, touches of compunction, dim, far 
away, hard to catch, hard to help, yet suggestive still of 
possibilities in him rather smothered than dead. The 
forgiveness which was real from the first as prayer both 
realizes and manifests itself, as opportunities grow, in 
further acts, themselves necessary corollaries of the prayer. 
If indeed it should chance, in greater degree or in less, 
that the question of the punishment of the criminal 
should fall within our power; our forgiveness might 
indeed mean remission of punishment; but it is no 
less possible that it might mean infliction, not remission. ° 
For that is, in either case, a question of detail, a question 
of the more expedient method—regarded as a means to 
anend. Our forgiveness is found, neither in punishment 
nor remission as such; but in our clear view and un- 
Swerving aim, of thought and heart, towards the end. 


70 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


And the end is the effectual realization at last of such 
absolute antithesis between the sinner and his sin, as only 
is perfectly realized when he, the real he, is no longer 
a sinner but righteous. 

It seems, then, that, even for the purpose of studying 
the meaning and character of forgiveness between man 
and man, we are apt to be misled if we begin with the 
case of a victim suffering under triumphant wickedness. 
But if we begin with the relation of parent and child, 
because it is likest to the case of God with man, and 
study it in the light of God’s forgiveness of man; and 
so, from it, pass on to the question of forgiveness between 
equals, we shall reach a truer conception of what, even 
in the most ordinary cases among brethren, true forgive- 
ness does, or ought ideally to, mean. 

It may be that our imagination can picture scenes— 
death-scenes, perhaps in the hospital or on the scaffold, when 
the forgiveness of one who once was cruelly persecuted in 
his holiness, which could ¢hen take only the form of silent 
prayer for his persecutor, has passed on, without change in 
itself, through changing conditions of outward opportunity, 
until it is visibly like the forgiveness of a tenderly loving 
parent; until, that is, it is the persecutor who is lying— 
very helpless at once and very sorrowful; while he who 
was the victim, having now on his side all material force, 
and reflecting in himself, as example and teacher and 
judge, the very light of the holiness of God—reflects 
God also in ¢hzs, that his love, like the love of God which 
is in it, yearns with fatherly tenderness as towards an 
erring child, striving by love to awake an outcry of re- 
sponsive desire, which it can—which it will—embrace as 
the real earnest of a personal self-identification with love. 

All this is really implicit in the fact, itself as fact not 
at all unfamiliar, that forgiveness must always retain its — 
underlying character as a provisional thing, unless and ~ 





11.] FORGIVENESS WI 


until it is consummated in the holiness of the penitent, 
and in the perfect embrace, by love because it is love, 
of the holy penitent because of the holiness that is in him. 
Certainly we do not forget the extreme imperfectness of 
human achievement in this, as in all directions of spiritual 
life. But none the less it is true that, when penitence once 
has begun, in any soul of man, however much it may seem 
to fall short of its meaning, nothing less than this is what 
it ideally means. It is a beginning, whose entire consum- 
mation, should it ever be consummated, would mean, in 
the perfect penitent, nothing less than a real and living 
righteousness. If it stops short of real separation from 
sin ; if it stops short of true allegiance to righteousness ; 
(and we are under no sort of delusion as to the universal 
experience of failure ;) but if it stops short of these things, 
in stopping short of them it stops short of itself; for these 
things are the consummation of what penitence means. 
And forgiveness, when it reaches its consummation, is 
love’s embrace of such a penitence as this. 

I cannot, then, understand less than this in the word 
forgiveness. And meanwhile I, or any man,—if through 
the life and death and life again, the accomplished work 
of the atonement of Jesus Christ, and our communion of 
spirit with it and with Him, we too look up in hope to be 
forgiven: what is the truth of the meaning, in us, of that 
hope? Is it a hope that we,—the content of that word “ we” 
remaining as it now is, untransformed,—shall nevertheless 
be excused from punishment? or shall be called by the 
name, or treated, apart from truth, as zf we were righteous: 
whilst all the time we are but what we know ourselves, in 
ourselves, to be? 

Certainly this is not the true character of the Christian 
hope. If it were, the hope of forgiveness would carry with 
it no aspiration moral or spiritual. - Forgiveness is no mere 
transaction outside the self, a mere arithmetical balance, 


72 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


which leaves the self unchanged. Even the earliest touch, 
on the conscious moral life, of the most provisional for- 
giveness, must be a bracing touch, enhancing moral power, 
or (at the least) adding flame to moral desire. If it does 
neither, it is plainly foredoomed, as an experiment of love 
which already has failed. But if it does, or so far as it 
does ; already the content and character of the I who am 
forgiven is to that extent changed. And the full for- 
giveness to which in faith I aspire is a forgiveness on the 
part—not of weak indulgence but of righteousness and 
truth, a forgiveness on the part of the infinite God. It is 
the righteous love, which seeing in me at last the very 
righteousness of Christ, and seeing me only as one with the 
Spirit of righteousness which is the Spirit of Christ, em- 
braces in me the righteousness which really is there; the 
righteousness which, though not of me, is now the very 
truth of what I,in Him,am. This is the consummation of 
the triumph of Love. 

Dare any one aspire to less than this? or mean less than 
this by his hope to be forgiven? The hope of forgiveness 
merely, which is not, of inherent necessity, the hope of 
a heart set upon personal righteousness,—is a pagan rather 
than a Christian hope. If I can have no heart for, and 
no belief in, the possibility, even within myself, of the 
righteousness of God ; I know not with what consistency of 
meaning I can ask—of God—to be forgiven. It is not so 
much for lack of possibility as for lack of desire, that men 
are tempted to put such a hope as this on one side, 
Nothing is really too high, in the Person of Christ, for those 
who have the heart to desire it,—and Him. 

Meanwhile, if our thought reverts to those who, to 
human eyes, have failed, and sunk: poor, lonely, drifting 
souls, with stunted capacities now, and shattered hopes, 
drawing in towards the shadow of dishonoured graves: 
the meaning of every hope that our love can frame for 


111.] FORGIVENESS 73 


their so late and faltering penitence,—for (if it be so now) 
their dying tears; is that even these, scanty, late, and 
feeble though they seem, may yet be, in them, a real 
beginning of capacity, seen in God’s sight to be a be- 
ginning, and real,—of what, in its full development will 
become nothing less than a personal self-identification, in 
love, with the love, which is also the holiness, of God. 
For him, too,—for the lowest in human seeming, as for the 
highest, our real hope of forgiveness consummated is a 
hope of righteousness: a hope of God’s love altogether 
loving at last—what, through the marvellous working of 
God’s love, has become at last altogether lovable. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 


THE Christian doctrine of the Atonement has been 
variously expounded. The Christian doctrine of the 
Atonement, however expounded, has been vehemently 
impugned. And indeed there is one objection, often 
made against it, which is vital Expound the action, or 
nature, of the Mediator how you will, it is said that any 
idea of a Mediator is impossible. Not so much anything 
in the detail of His work, but the very core of the idea 
presents itself to some minds as being, fundamentally, an 
immorality and an untruth. 

The problem, it will be said (legitimately enough) is 
this. Hereis man. Here is one, that is, who is immoral 
and unholy in fact. By what conceivable action or process 
can the de facto unholy become actually holy? And if 
the Christian answer begins to speak of a Redeemer, how 
is it conceivable (the mind asks) that any Redeemer’s 
work, or endurance, or goodness, be it what it may, seeing 
that it is outside the personalities of men, should touch 
the point of pressing necessity, which is an_ essential 
alteration of what men are? What is wanted is not 
that there should be a wonderful exhibition somewhere 
of obedience, or that somebody should be holy: not even 
that the amount or the value of holiness in the world 
should balance, and perhaps outweigh, the huge volume 
of unholiness. What is wanted is that these particular 


personalities should be holy, which are in fact the reverse, 
7 


a ii 2 aE dy acne ee 


ne ee ee a a a 


cHap. Iv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 75 


How can the particular thing which is required be touched 
by the introduction of “another”? Here, if anywhere in 
the world, there can be no question of a fictitious trans- 
action, or an unreal imagining; here, if anywhere, what- 
ever is not vitally and personally real is both mockery 
and despair. 

Now it may be that this is a case in which logic, by 
its very abstraction from experience, over-reaches itself. 
At all events, as a sort of preliminary reply, let us begin 
with a case which comes from the side of experience, 
rather than of logic. Consider, then, the case of a man 
in whose character we may happen to be interested very 
closely, and whose character is unmistakably bad. The 
daily hope and prayer in respect of him is that he may 
not be that which he is, and may become what he is not. 
But what is to be done? One thing is plain from the 
first. He must not be simply left alone. To leave him 
wholly to himself is to abandon hope. Instinctively you 
rather ask, who is there about him? has he a mother? a 
sister? a high-principled companion? a really good friend? 
If he has; there, you say at once, is the point of hope. 
Everything will probably turn upon that friend. And 
then comes the second thought; yes, but if parent, sister, 
friend, is to be his salvation, to be the living lever whereby 
he is himself really to become the very thing he is not, 
it will be no light task, no light pain, for the saving 
friend. What heaviness of heart there must first be, 
what anxious thought and care, what hoping against 
hope, what sense of effort disappointed, and love (as it 
seems) thrown away, what unwearying prayer to God, 
what patient bearing with folly, perverseness, and sin! 
If he who is the cause of all the trouble is himself with- 
out anguish, and without contrition, and will endure no 
discipline, and cannot entreat in prayer: how much 
of all the burden of all these things must the friend 


76 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


bear first, in order that, and until, the man himself, who 
has seen and gradually felt these things in his friend, 
may be able, and willing, to bear them a little for 
himself. If the friend will not do this; if no one will 
enter into the grief and sin, sharing it as if it were his 
own; you have comparatively little hope. It is not a 
friend who will lecture, so much as a friend who will — 
bear: not a friend who is ready to separate himself 
from, but a friend who is willing himself to enter into, 
the shadow of the cloud of misery and sin; who has 
become already, in that willingness, a hope and an 
earnest of the penitent character, even of the man 
who does not, as yet, himself, repent, or amend, or 
(hardly even) desire. 

But this, of course, carries us but a little way. It 
stops very far short of the meaning of Atonement. Yet 
it may serve perhaps to make logic a little more cautious. 
The intervention of “another” is by no means so obviously 
irrelevant as it appeared to be. Whatever else it is, the 
case just supposed is at all events a most familiar experi- 
ence in life. And it so far illustrates the real moral 
and spiritual effectiveness which may be the outcome of 
the voluntary suffering of another, as'to make it impossible 
to reject beforehand any theory of moral recovery, merely 
because it can be said to hinge upon the idea of another’s 
suffering. 

But it will be felt that, even if it be not fundamentally 
impossible, the idea of an atoning mediator is, and must 
be, incompatible with any profound reality of justice. If 
A be the judge or king, and B the culprit, under what 
conceivable circumstances, or upon what conceivable 
principle of justice, can A fail to punish B, or allow C 
to intervene at all? 

It will perhaps be observed that our sense of the 
incompatibleness of any such intervention with justice 


Iv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 77 


becomes rigid and absolute, the moment we begin to 
use the terms, or conjure up the associations, of a system 
of judicial administration. The fact is that tribunals of 
human justice mislead our thought on this subject almost 
as much as they inform it. Human justice is necessarily 
both clumsy and rigid. The judge must administer 
general rules. General rules involve the sacrifice of 
the particular, to the average, interest. Continually 
the judge must do, for the sake of law, that is, for the 
sake of the general community, what is not really the 
wisest, or the justest, for the merely individual case. It 
is almost impossible to imagine the judicial circumstances, 
on earth, under which either judge or king would be 
perfectly free to decide, in reference to the requirements 
of moral goodness only, what would really be the wisest 
and the best for the ultimate welfare of a single wrong- 
doer. Moreover, even if the surrounding circumstances 
did not make this impossible, no human insight of wisdom 
would be adequate for it. Human justice that attempted 
to be divinely just, would break to pieces altogether. 

If indeed such freedom could be imagined, and wisdom 
withal that was adequate to wield it; we should recognise 
by and by that the extreme rigidity of the practical 
assumption that every man is, absolutely and equally, dis- 
tinct from every one but himself, would begin to be at 
least a little less rigid. We should not indeed be in the 
habit of seeing guilty people let off, and others suffering 
in their stead: far from it: but we should perhaps be 
aware, of the possibility, in two different directions, of 
certain exceedingly dim and distant approaches towards 
what would look like this. 

On the one side, we should recognize at least that there 
might be cases, in which, if no one could exactly be a 
substitute for the guilty, yet at least some could more 
nearly approach to being so than others. It is something to 


78 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


recognize that the impossibility is not, in all cases, absolute 
and equal: that there are at least degrees of impossibility. 
Degrees of impossibility imply, at least ideally, degrees of 
possibility also. A stranger, hired for money to undergo a 
loss of limb or liberty, would always be an insult to true 
equity. But one who was very closely identified with the 
wrong-doer in condition, or blood, or affection ; a tribesman 
dedicating himself for a tribal wrong; the willing repre- 
sentative of a conquered nation, or army; the father, on 
behalf of his own child ; the husband, for the sake of his 
wife; is it impossible to conceive circumstances under 
which a willing acceptance of penalty on the part of some 
one of these, would as truly be the deepest hope of the 
transformation of the guilty, as it would be the crown of 
his own’ nobleness? Imagine, ideally, these three con- 
ditions: first that he who so intervened to bear did so 
at his own most earnest desire, of love; secondly that he 
was so near to the guilty accused that he might claim 
a wholly exceptional right to represent him,—near as 
(under conceivable circumstances) husband might be to 
wife, or parent to child, or son to father; and thirdly that 
this sacrifice of vicarious endurance was indeed the truest 
and the deepest way to produce the contrition and sancti- 
fication of the guilty; and what follows? We need not 
go so far as to say that any judge or lord on earth could 
accept the sacrifice. But we may possibly recognize that 
the impossibility which remains, depends not so much on 
any essential lack of ideal righteousness in that which 
might ideally be the consummation of righteousness in 
them all; but rather in the many human limitations which 
would make any imaginable instance upon earth a mere 
resemblance or approximation to the ideal conditions, not 
a full attainment of them. It may be said, perhaps, that 
of the last two conditions asked for, neither could ever 
be quite absolutely realized. Between man and man, on 


Iv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 79 


earth, they probably could not. But what we may recog- 
nize, even between man and man, is some faint approxi- 
mation towards—even if never, or even nearly, a realiza- 
tion of—the conditions under which vicarious penalty 
would be not intelligible only, but the supremest mani- 
festation of righteousness as well as of love. 

There is another side also to the thought. If, in 
proportion to the just conceivable possibility of the 
legitimate identification of some other with the culprit 
we can conceive moral character in vicarious penalty; 
on the other hand, in proportion to the identification 
between the lord who judges and the person who has 
been wronged, we can understand the righteousness of 
a judging lord who should forego any kind of compensation 
or penalty; that is, in effect, should bear all the. burden 
of the harm himself. If it is the king’s own son who 
has been maltreated and robbed; and if the king, in a 
mood of divine insight, truly sees that his free acceptance 
of this injury in the person of his son, will be the turning- 
point of the conversion to goodness of the robber, and 
it may be of a whole district of brigandage; the very 
closeness of the identification between himself and his 
son makes possible an equity which, had the son been 
a stranger, would have been unrighteous, 

But, after all, such suggestions as these are most 
precarious, It is difficult to omit them; for they represent 
some real truth. Yet they are by themselves so little 
convincing that, as matter of mere policy, it might have 
been more persuasive to leave them unsaid. Though 
men are not so absolutely distinct from one another as 
modern thought and life assume them to be; though 
the father is in the child, and the child is a real repre- 
sentative of the father; though as there are family 
likenesses and national characters, so there are family 
and national responsibilities and consubstantialities ; yet, 


ce 


80 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


after all, no one man quite can be another; if, in a flash, 
for a moment, we seemed to see them becoming almost 
as one, yet we fall back ; the essential distinction remains ; 
no one is another; the injustice of vicarious penalty is 
not done away. 

And in any case the language of human jurisprudence 
is confusing. The rough imperfectness, which is the best 
possibility of human judgment, cannot really light up 
the mystery of the perfectness of the judgement of God. 
We shall be carried somewhat further by another sort of 
instance, which at least is free from all the misleading 
rigidity of legal conceptions. Let A, then, be not the 
judge, but the father,—loving, wise, and true; and B the 
child, who has gone very far wrong; and C—the mother. 
And let her be thought of, not as in any respect either 
weak or cowardly, but as a wise and brave, as well as 
tender-hearted, woman. There is here no question of a 
legal obligation on the father to impose formal punishment ; 
but the problem is the real transformation of the character 
of the child. Do we not recognize at once that the pro- 
foundest hope for the child’s real change lies in the reality 
with which the parents enter into his grief and shame; 
so enter into it, on his behalf, as to win it to be in him 
where in fact it was not, until it was firstin them, and 
in him only from them? Do we not recognize, in 
particular, the place, in his discipline and his purifying, 
which may belong to the voluntary distress and endur- 
ance of the mother? This is no question, it is to be 
observed, of a penalty which the father insists on inflicting 
upon somebody, and which the mother intervenes to bear. 
Nothing whatever is inflicted by the father on the mother. 
Indeed, nothing is, speaking strictly, inflicted on any one 
by any one. The penalty which the mother bears is the 
penalty of contrition: it is rather an effort of discipline 
than a price of satisfaction; it corresponds in idea not to 


= ee ae 


Iv.] ‘THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 81 


punishment so much, regarded externally as a squaring 
of accounts, as to the moral discipline which, through 
self-abasement, self-condemnation, and self-surrender to 
penalty, wins its painful way to victorious goodness and 
peace. And she bears it—not as an inflicted sentence, 
but as the spontaneous instinct and outflow of her own 
intensity of love. And finally, so far is it from being 
imposed by the relentlessness of an unforgiving father, 
that whatever she bears in this way, he too bears in her 
and with her; for in mind, in this matter, and in will, 
they are one. Whatever he may seem to exact, she 
exacts as completely as he. Whatever she is willing to 
endure, his sympathy too, and his will, and his yearning 
desire, are with her to the full in enduring. 

It is probable that this analogy carries us much further 
towards truth than any that can be borrowed from forensic 
justice. Nevertheless this too is an imperfect analogy. It 
carries us further, but it fails at the pinch. It is suggestive 
of much: but it certainly is not a parallel to atonement. 
For even here, after all, much as the parents’ goodness 
may influence the child, yet they are distinct. The father 
is not the mother ; and the mother is not the child. 

Now it is precisely here, in the light, that is to say, 
at once of the suggestiveness of these analogies, and also 
of the hopeless inadequacy which we find to be inherent 
in them, that we are confronted by those great affirmations 
of fundamental doctrine, which lie at the basis of the 
“Atonement” of Christian revelation. It is at the very 
root of the Christian doctrine that He, who made atone- 
ment between God and man, Himself, in the fullest sense, 
was God and was Man. If He were man only, however 
perfectly, and not God: the whole idea of any reality 
of effectual mediation or atonement — without which 
Christianity, beautiful though it might be in idea, would 
not be Christianity—falls in a moment absolutely to the 

F 


82 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


ground, If He were not God, the statement that He was 
a good man could be only an inexact and relative truth. 
Absolutely, on close analysis, it would not, and could not 
possibly, be true. Moreover if He were not God, the fact 
that He was good (in whatever sense it may be imagined 
to be true) would be a fact of no more moment to me, 
than the fact that Samson was strong, or Solomon wise, 
or S. Paul intrepid, or S. John beloved. They were, but 
I am not; and that is the difference between them and 
me; and that is all. The more, indeed, they were these 
things, the greater the difference. And the more trans- 
cendently good He was, the more hopelessly unapproach- 
able would He be to me,—if He were only another man, 
and not God. 

From the point of view, however, of the Christian faith, 
this is the one absolutely cardinal and primary truth ; that, 
in the words of the Athanasian Creed, “Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God, is God and man; God of the 
substance of the Father, begotten before the world; and 
man, of the substance of His Mother, born in the world; 
perfect God and perfect Man.” These are the familiar 

words, the authority of which is not likely to be challenged. 
| But perhaps it may not be wrong to suggest that that 
which is understood and meant, even in the assertion of 
these familiar words, is apt to be ambiguous, and may 
very often be inadequate. My meaning may be very 
unsatisfactory when I say that the Father is God, and 
that Jesus Christ a/so is God; or that I am man, and that 
Jesus Christ a/so is man. Such language sounds far too 
much as if we were thinking first of A and of B, and then 
C was subsequently introduced, who was like B in being 
also human, and like A in being also Divine. The word 
“also” and the word “like” are both of them instantly 
liable to misinterpretation. They seem to introduce the 
generic conception; as though the word “God” could 


Iv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 83 


represent a genus or class, and there were more members 
of the genus than one. The truth is of course not so, 
To the thoughtful Christian the word God is an absolute 
and singular,—it cannot possibly be a generic—word. 
By a sort of economy or condescension of phrase, when 
we speak towards those who are without, we may use it 
generically “as there be lords many and gods many,” 
or as when under the general heading “Theism” we 
include true and false conceptions of God alike. But 
whatever be the just ground for thus in speech classifying 
together the true and the imperfect and the false, to 
ourselves at least, when face to face with real truth, 
God is, and can be, but One. “Hear O Israel, the 
Lord our God, the Lord, is One”? is a word not only 
not abrogated, but expressly re-enacted, in the Chris- 
tian faith, The Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and 
end, and sum, and meaning of Being is but One. We 
who believe in a Personal God do not mean a limited 
God. Wedo not mean one more a bigger specimen of 
existence, amongst existences. Rather we mean that 
the reality of existence itself is Personal. We mean that 
all the different abstracts, pushed back far enough, are 
personal, and the One same Personal: that Power, that 
Law, that Life, that Thought, that Love, are ultimately, 
in their very reality, identified in one supreme, and that 
necessarily a Personal, existence. Now such Supreme 
Being cannot be multiplied: it is incapable of a plural: 
it cannot be a generic term. There cannot be more than 
one all inclusive, more than one ultimate, more than one 
God. Nor has Christian thought at any point, for any 
moment, dared, or endured, the least approach to such 
a thought or phrase as “Two Gods.” If the Father is 
God, and the Son God, they are both the same God, 
wholly, unreservedly. God is a particular, an unique, 
1 Mark xii, 29, R.V. 


84 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


not a general term. Each is not only God, but is the 
very same “singularis unicus et totus Deus.” They are 
not both generically God, as though “God” could be an 
attribute or a predicate; but both zdentically God, the God, 
the One, all inclusive, indivisible, God.? 

Considerations like these, fundamental though they may 
be, are by no means unnecessary; for there is, among 
Christians, not a little popular thought, which, meaning 
to be orthodox, is, in fact, more or less, Tri-theistic ; and 
which, just because it so far tends towards plurality of 
God, goes some way to provoke, and account for, the 
correlative popular tendency, and tenderness, towards 
Unitarianism. Just so far as Christian thought tends, 
in fact, towards making God a generic predicate; the 


1“ And sith they all are but one God in number, one indivisible essence 
or substance, their distinction cannot possibly admit separation. For how 
should that subsist solitarély by itself which hath no substance but individually 
the very same whereby others subsist with it; seeing that the multiplication 
of substances 7” particular is necessarily required to make those things subsist 
apart which have the same general nature, and the Persons of that Trinity are 
not three particular substances to whom one genera/ nature is common, but 
three that subsist by one substance which ttself ts particular, yet they all three 
have it, and their several ways of having it are that which maketh their 
personal distinction?” Hooker, E.P.V. lvi. 2. p. 246. 

‘* The schoolmen are known to have insisted with great earnestness on 
the numerical unity of the Divine Being; each of the three Divine Persons 
being one and the same God, unicus, singularis, et totus Deus. [But see 
Aquinas, Summa, p. I. Qu. xxxi. art. 2. Vol. xx. p. 153.] In this, however, 
they did but follow the recorded doctrine of the Western theologians of the 
5th century, as I suppose will be allowed by critics generally. So forcible is 
St Austin upon the strict unity of God, that he even thinks it necessary to 
caution his readers lest they should suppose that he could allow them to speak 
of One Person as well as of Three in the Divine Nature, de Zyvin. vii. 11. 
Again, in the (so-called) Athanasian Creed, the same elementary truth is 
emphatically insisted on. The neuter w#um of former divines is changed 
into the masculine, in enunciating the mystery. ‘‘ Non tres zterni, sed unus 
zternus.” I suppose this means that Each Divine Person is to be received as 
the one God as entirely and absolutely as He would be held to be, if we had 
never heard of the other Two, and that He is not in any respect less than the 
one and only God, because They are each the same one God also; or in other 
words, that as each human individual being has one personality, the Divine 
Being has three.” 

Newman’s Arians, appendix, note iv. p. 447. 3rd edn. 


Iv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 85 


necessary protest on behalf of the unity of God (necessary 
perhaps from the scientific and philosophical not less 
than from the theological side) will naturally begin to 
assert itself as a correction, rather than as a corroboration, 
of orthodox theology. If the thought that wishes to be 
orthodox had less tendency to become Tri-theistic, the 
thought that claims to be free would be less Unitarian. 

For centuries upon centuries, it is to be remembered, 
the essential unity of God had been, as it were, burnt 
and branded in upon the consciousness of Israel. It had 
to be completely established first, as a basal element of 
thought, indispensable, unalterable, before there really 
could begin the disclosure to man of the reality of 
eternal relations within the one indivisible Being of 
God. And when the disclosure came, it came not as 
modifying,—far less as denying,—but as further inter- 
preting and illumining that unity which it absolutely 
presupposed. 

Probably, however, there will be many minds which, 
if they put into words their instinctive feeling in respect 
of such thoughts as these, would express themselves 
somewhat in this way: they would say, we are afraid 
of saying too much: we are afraid, in such an assertion 
of unity, of explaining away the threefold distinction of 
Personality: we are afraid of reducing it to a threefold- 
ness merely of phrase, or merely of aspect: in a word, 
we are afraid of Sabellianism. It might possibly be 
enough to reply that if two truths, which intellect im- 
perfectly correlates, are nevertheless to be really held 
together, they are best held not by a refusal to affirm 
either positively, for fear of interfering with the other, 
but by a fearless assertion, in its turn, of each. But 
indeed these two truths are not simply held together, 
without any attempt at correlation. They do not come 
to us exactly, as it were, on the same level. The one 


86 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


comes to us as more fundamental and primary than the 
other. The second is an element in, or method of, the 
first. And our direct answer is that we cannot possibly 
incur any Sabellian peril, whilst we firmly understand and 
maintain (what is fatal to Sabellianism) that that which 
is revealed within Divine Unity is not only a distinction 
of aspects or of names, but a real reciprocity of mutual 
relation. One “aspect” cannot contemplate, or be loved 
by another. If we recognize that revelation discloses, 
within the one being of God, both subject and object at 
once, a mutuality of eternal contemplation, a mutuality © 
of eternal love, no language that we can use about unity 
can be really Sabellian; for any thought of mutual 
relationship between aspects of one, which differ only 
as aspects, would be wholly impossible. We may dis- 
miss then any fear of affirming the unity too much, and 
repeat that it must needs be inadequate thought, which 
would think of the Son as only being, generically, “ke 
to the Father, in being also, yet distinctly, God. What 
the Father is, that is the Son, not similarly but identi- 
cally, for He and the Father are One. 

From this we turn to the human side. “Perfect God 
and perfect Man.” Now if the generic sense, as applied 
to God, is impossible: as applied to man it is at least 
inadequate and untrue. If He might have been, yet He 
certainly was not, a man only, amongst men. His relation 
to the human race is not that He was another specimen, 
differing, by being another, from everyone except Him- 
self. His relation to the race was not a differentiating 
but a consummating relation. He was not generically, 
but inclusively, man. 

The fact, indeed, even of our own distinctness one 
from another, is not (as has been already urged) so bald 
or so ultimate as we sometimes make it. The father zs 
reproduced in the son: we know not how deep may be 


IVv.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 87 


the community between brother and brother. If “we” 
defeated the Armada or Napoleon,—we who had no 
more hand in it than the French or Spanish infants 
yet unborn: if the felon’s dishonour brands the whole 
family name: if Israel fled and died because Achan 
sinned; or (more awfully still) if “Israel” put to death 
the Son of Man: then connections like these are. no 
merely artificial make-believe, no idle form of fashion in 
phrase. Even the wider phrase “solidarity of humanity,” 
is one which, as it has probably more meaning now than 
ever it could have had in the world before, so perhaps 
every day, and from every side at once, (the practical side, 
and the scientific, as well as the philosophical and the 
religious) is growing in directness and depth of signifi- 
cance. Whatever we do, we do not for ourselves alone. 
The attempt to make an isolated life is an impossible 
attempt. It is not as an individual that I can be 
measured or judged. What I am is what I am in 
relation to an environment. As child in the family, as 
school-fellow, as comrade, as citizen, as householder, to 
those around, rich or poor, good or evil, bright or sad,— 
I am determined more and more, by my relations. From 
the very lowest form of boon-companionship, or partner- 
ship in crime, to the life of perpetual service to man, and 
to God in man, this dependence and relativity of the 
individual life is in one way or other perpetually being 
realized. 

But once more, as between man and man, these things 
are a parable, an aspiration, a glimpse: they still always 
fall short. It is precisely here that the relation of Jesus 
Christ to humanity is unique. What others do but faintly 
suggest is realized in him. Other cases, if they illustrate it 
at all, must illustrate it at least as emphatically by what 
they are not, as by anything that they are. To think of 
Him merely in the light of the ordinary possibilities of 


88 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


others, to think of the significance, or power, of His 
humanity as limited to His sole individual self-hood, is in-. 
compatible with the very existence and meaning of the 
Church. He alone was not generically but inclusively 
man. 

The only relation which can at all directly compare with 
it, is that of Adam; who, in a real—though a primarily 
external, and therefore inadequate—sense, was Humanity ; 
so that every succeeding instance of humanity is human by 
direct derivation from him, as very part and parcel of what 
he was. The reality and directness of our relation with 
Adam we feel only too cogently. It is useless to argue 
about it; it is there. It is part of what we begin with. 
It belongs to that consciousness of the self which is anterior 
to any analysis or argument. Every pulsation of the 
blood in our veins, every limitation, or temptation, or dis- 
order, or decay, which, through the avenue of the body has 
come home to ourselves, and registered itself as part of our 
own private history and consciousness, is witness only too 
_ incontrovertible to the necessity and the absoluteness of 
our relationship with Adam. The nature, in and through 
which we live, is the nature which we have received by 
transmission from him. It is in us what it was in him first, 
We cannot separate ourselves from him. No indignation, 
no bewailing, no strenuousness of effort or resolve will avail 
to alter the underlying fact that our humanity is his 
humanity. From him it was derived to us; and in us it 
retains all those natural qualities and tendencies, in which 
and through which our personality grows to self-conscious- 
ness and self-expression ; but which themselves, long before 
any personality of ours, for good or for evil took their 
stamp, as being what they were, in him. 

This is the only instance, actual or possible, with which 
the relation of Jesus Christ to humanity has been in scrip- 
ture, or can be, compared. But even in this one case the 





IV.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR 89 


comparison is not completely adequate. It is valid as an 
illustration, but remains on a different, and dissimilar, level. 
The one is a fleshly relation, the other a spiritual. The 
one works automatically, materially, mechanically. The 
other is realized in a different sphere, and depends upon 
other than material conditions. The one is a natural 
property of bodily life, and follows, as it were blindly, from 
the fact that Adam was the original parent. The other is 
a Spiritual property, so sovereign, so transcendent, that it 
could only be a property of a Humanity which was not 
merely the Humanity of a finite creature, but the Humanity 
of the infinite God. 

Not that there is any absolute antithesis between spirit 
and body. Neither is body without spirit, nor spirit without 
body. What Adam is to the flesh, and, through the flesh, 
indirectly to the spirit also; that is Christ to the spirit, and, 
_ through the spirit, indirectly also to the flesh, of all those 
who, as they are partakers, in flesh, of Adam, are made 
capable of becoming partakers, in Spirit, of Christ. We 
talk, indeed, ourselves, in a limited sense, of one man 
speaking or acting in the spirit of another ; and so far-as it 
‘goes the phrase is not untrue; yet it goes but a very little 
way. That complete indwelling and possessing of even 
one other, which the yearnings of man towards man im- 
perfectly approach, is only possible, in any fulness of the 
words, to that Spirit of Man which is the Spirit of God: to 
the Spirit of God, become;sthrough Incarnation, the Spirit 
of Man. No mere man indwells, in Spirit, in, or as, the 
_ Spirit of another. Whatever near approach there may be 
seen to be towards this, is really mediated through the 
Spirit of Christ. If I grow at last towards unity of spirit 
with my friend: it is not really that I am in him, or he in 
me; but rather that the grace of indwelling Spirit which 
indwelt in him, and made him, in his own way, what he 
was, is not denied even to me. Experience of man with 


go ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. » 


man, here as elsewhere, gives but a faint analogy of the 
meaning of the Divine. But, here as elsewhere, it would. 
be a fatal mistake to interpret the meaning of the Divine 
only in terms of man’s experience with man. After all, 
we do not fully attain to the meaning of anything here. 
We do but point towards, we do not realize, even that 
which we first and most claim to possess—self-conscious 
personality : we do not realize the conditions without which 
we ourselves should be unthinkable: what wonder if we 
can but point dimly towards, and cannot realize, the reci- 
procity of true intercommunion of spirits?” But what our 
limited being points towards, is real in God. If Christ’s 
Humanity were not the Humanity of Deity, it could not 
stand in the wide, inclusive, consummating relation, in 
which it stands in fact, to the humanity of all other men. 
But as it is, the very essence of the Christian religion is the 
indwelling of the Spirit of Christ. “The first man Adam 
became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving 
Spirit.”1 “If sud man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is 
none of His.’ "7 

No attempt will be made, in the present context at 
least, to enlarge further upon the methods or meanings 
of this mutual inherence, this spiritual indwelling, whereby 
humankind is summed anew, and included, in Christ.’ 
Nor need we at this moment attempt to enter into a 
discussion as to the meaning of the prerogative of free 
will, or that awful possibility which is inherent in it, 
whereby we may revolt, and reject, and put ourselves 
outside the life of Christ. Be that possibility what it may, 
it is not that that can interpret—for it is utter revolt and 
contradiction against—the meaning of the atoning work 
of Christ. The meaning of that work must be found, not 
in the mystery of the possibility of its being contradicted, 


1 1 Cor. xv. 45. 2 Romans viii. 9. 
* These subjects are further discussed in chapters viii. and ix. 


aa ect: oer ee 


1v.] THE PERSON OF THE MEDIATOR gt 


but in the beauty of its unmarred effectiveness. And 
apart from man’s power to revolt from it, which we do 
not now discuss, it certainly means inclusion within the 
Body of the Spirit of Christ. 

If there be those to whom such language sounds in the 
least degree either figurative or overstrained, it may, at 
the present stage, be sufficient to remind them of these 
three things. First, that its truth, as literal and vital, 
is absolutely assumed in all that St Paul has to say about 


the first, and the second, Adam. Secondly that not in 


one place only, but from end to end, language expressive 
of this truth is so reiterated and insisted on in the New 
Testament, that it may fairly be called the characteristic 
truth of the apostolic Church. If there is one corollary 
from the Deity of Christ, which, more than another, we 
may defy any man to eradicate from New Testament 
theology, without shivering the whole into fragments, 
it is the truth of the recapitulation and inclusion of the 
Church, which is, ideally at least, as wide as humanity, 
in Christ. And thirdly, that this truth is the obvious 
basis of the entire sacramental system and doctrine, that 
is, of the divinely distinctive worship, which is the divine 


_ expression of the faith and life, of the Church of Christ. 


What is Baptism, in its truest realization, but our in- 
corporation, as members, into the Body of Christ? What 
is Holy Communion, but a feeding and living upon the 
Body and Blood of Christ? The beginning of life in 


_Christ’s Church is the free gift of membership in Christ. 


The crown of the most ideal and unfaltering life of 
communion is the consummation of personal union with 
Christ. The whole sacramental system symbolizes, ex- 
pounds, represents, yes and conveys—not mechanically 
nor magically, but intelligently, morally and spiritually, 


_—this far more than merely human reality of inclusion 


with and in Christ. 


92 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [cuap. rv. 


No doubt all this may be said to be merely preliminary. 
Nothing has yet been offered in the way of explanation 
of the nature, or meaning, of the atoning action of our 
Lord. But perhaps it is not in vain to try and take 
account even of the more external and pedantic. barriers 
by which the, often unconscious, perverseness of the 
natural intellect tries to shut out our moral and spiritual 
consciousness from that assimilation of the basal truth 
of atonement, which is, in fact, its deepest necessity. 
And if perplexities of arithmetical character are to be — 
met in terms of arithmetic; at least, when pressed by 
the charge of moral injustice in the fact of the vicarious 
intervention of any mediating third term between God 
and man, we may point out that there is a necessary, and 
a very grave, misconception in the terms of the charge: 
for He can be no intervening “third,” who is Himself 
—not similarly, not generically, but wholly, individually, 
identically—the “ first,” and wholly, individually, identically 
the “second” also; who is Himself, on the one side 
absolutely, on the other (if we will but have it so), at 
least with a Divine potentiality, “singularis, unicus, et 
totus ”—et Deus et Homo, 


CHAPTER V 
THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 


WE now pass from the thought of the Person of Jesus 
Christ as, like Adam, and more even than Adam, the repre- 


_ sentative and inclusive summary of all mankind: and con- 


sider rather, in respect of Himself, what His self-expression 
in humanity meant; and what is manifested in it as to 


| the true relation of the human self to God. 


It has no doubt been often felt as a difficulty to con- 
ceive quite adequately of the reality of His being, as 
human, without going in thought too far, and conceiving 
of Him at once as two distinct Persons, a human person as 
well as a Divine. And so Christian thought has learned to 
shrink from speaking, or thinking, of Him as “a human 
personality,” and has sometimes even made a sort of prin- 
ciple of speaking of the impersonal character of the 
humanity of Christ. But if there is error at hand in the 
one direction, there is certainly also error in the other. If 
there is a sense in which the assertion of a human person- 
ality runs easily into Nestorianism ; at least those who first 
asserted a human personality meant something, which the 
simple denial of the phrase may unduly disparage. To 
deny the human personality, however in some contexts 
necessary, is not without its own risks. There is, and 
there can be, no such thing as impersonal humanity. The 
phrase involves a contradiction in terms. Human nature 
which is not personal, is not human nature. Human 


nature can only be the nature of a person: not exactly, of 
98 


94 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


necessity, of a human person: but of a person who being 
in himself at least human—perhaps more than human—is 
so far as his assumption of humanity goes,—adequately 
self-expressed in terms, and through conditions, of humanity. 
Of necessity, He is a Person: and He, the Person, is 
human. The root and origin of His Personality may not 
be human. But in so far as He isa Person now humanly 
incarnate, the word human has become a true attribute, 
truly predicable of His Personality. Of necessity He is a 
Person, and a Person who now expresses His very self, 
through human conditions and capacities, as man. The 
human acts, and human character, are the acts and the 
character, the expression and the revelation, of Himself. 
“Christ is, in fact, a Divine Person: but a Divine Person 
not merely wearing manhood as a robe, or playing upon it 
as an instrument; but really expressing Himself in terms 
of Humanity: and thereby making Humanity—to the ut- 
most extent to which the conditions of mortal disability 
under which He took it were capable—a real and true re- 
flection and utterance of Deity. There was in Him no 
impersonal Humanity (which is impossiblé) “but a human 
nature and character which were personal because they 
were now the method and condition of His own Personality : 
Himself become Human, and thinking, speaking, acting, 
and | suffering, as man, 
“Tt would indeed ‘never be true to say of Him, during 


the time of His humiliation, that He was nothing more — 


than the Human expression of Himself. For He was, 
all through, the Infinite and Eternal, God the Word, 
“upholding all things by the word of His power” *— 


“God only begotten, which is in the bosom of the ~ 


Father.”? But however impossible it might be that 

the’ infinite God should wholly be, in all aspects and 

attributes of Deity, expressed in Humanity: yet at least 
1 Hebr. i. 3, 2 John i, 18, R.V. margin. 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 95 


the Incarnate, as Incarnate,—God, in flesh, as man,— 
was never Himself otherwise than as He could be, and 
was, expressed through attributes and capacities of man- 
hood. The Incarnate did not oscillate between being 
God and being man. He was indeed always God; and 
yet never otherwise God than as expressed within the 
possibilities of human consciousness and character. It 
was not indeed obscure to His consciousness that He, 
the Incarnate, was all the while something more than 
He was as Incarnate. “Before Abraham was, I am.”! 
“J and the Father are one.” “And now, O Father, 
glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee 
before the world was.”* These are not the words of 
One to whom His own essential being, or the origin, or 


the goal, of Incarnation are, in any sense, obscured. But | . Pe 
this continued self-consciousness, in Himself, of inherent .),” 
Deity ; this steady view, before and after, in the way of 


what we should call memory towards the past, and 
anticipation towards the future; is not incompatible with 


the principle that, in respect of the experience of Incarna-| J 
tion itself, its tasks and its sufferings, its works and its © 


_self-restraints, its mind and its character, He was God 
always and only in the way in which the human con- 
ditions which He had chosen were capable of being an 
expression of God. We do not gain, but greatly lose, 
in respect of the true impressiveness of the Incarnate 
life, if we imagine Him, at fitful intervals, as jumping 
away (so to speak) from the disabilities of the chosen 
condition of His self-expression, in order to make a 
display,—outside the limits of the Humanity in which 
He purported to be speaking and acting,—of non-human 
Deity. We greatly obscure the significance of His works 
of power unless we regard them as the works which 
properly belonged to the perfect human self-expression 


1 John ix. 53. *John x, 32. 8 John xvii, 5. 


96 " ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


of God: and not as works of God intruding, so to speak, 
across human conditions,—of God quite apart from all 
realities of human propriety, or human power. Whatever 
He said with human lips, whatever He did, acting amongst 
men in the place and figure of man, (though, no doubt, 
said and done by One who had not lost, in Himself, self- 
consciousness of Deity,) was nevertheless always said or 
done—not by Deity, as it were, acting barely as Deity, 
but by Deity conditioned by Humanity; by Human 
capacity, and Human character, according as these had 
become, and therefore were shown to be capable of 
becoming, the real expression and method and living 
utterance, of Deity, 

It is really of considerable importance to rid our 
imaginations of a certain dualism (in its way somewhat 
parallel to the Nestorian dualism, though issuing from 
a very different side, and with a very different history 
and motive) according to which the Person of Christ 
is currently conceived as being in such sense both God 
and man, that He is, in point of fact, two. There is 
Deity there, and there is also Humanity. He can speak, 
think, and act, sometimes under the conditions of one 
nature, sometimes under the conditions of the other. As 
God He does this; and as man He does that, and another 
thing partly as God, and partly as man. This distinction 
has been very prevalent indeed in the language of 
Christians. Assuredly no kind of irreverence was in- 
tended, nor any reality of dualism. Yet the language, 
on cross-examination, will be found to be largely dualistic. 
“The phrase “God and man” is of course perfectly true. 
But it is easy to lay undue emphasis on the “and.” And 
when this is done,—as it is done every day,—the truth 
is better expressed by varying the phrase. “He is not 
two, but one, Christ.” He is, then, not so much God and 
man, as God in, and through, and as, man. He is one 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 97 


indivisible, personality throughout. In His human life 
on earth, as Incarnate, He is not sometimes, but con- 
sistently, always, in every act and every detail, Human. 
The Incarnate never leaves His Incarnation. God, as 
man, is always, in all things, God as man. He no more 
ceases, at any point, to be God under methods and 
conditions essentially human ; than, under these essentially 
human methods and conditions, He at any point ceases 
to be God. » Whatever the reverence of their motive may 
be, men do harm to consistency and to truth, by keeping 
open, as it were, a sort of non-human sphere, or aspect, 
of the Incarnation. This opening we should unreservedly 
desire to close. “There are not two existences either of, 
or within, the Incarnate, side by side with one another. 
If it is all Divine, it is all human too, We are to study 
the Divine, in and through the human. By looking for 
the Divine side by side with the human, instead of dis- 
cerning the Divine within the human, we miss the signi- 
ficance of them both. 

e are not, then, to be in the least degree afraid of 
the fullest realization of the humanness of Christ: for 
the human experience, in its directest reality as human 
experience, is first itself the revelation of the character of 
God: and secondly, in revealing God, it is a revelation also 
of what human character and capacity, even under con- 
ditions of extremest disability, really are and mean. We 
quite miss the revelation of Humanity in Jesus Christ, if 
we insist on denying that its highest manifestations are 
predicable of Humanity at all. And even the revelation 
of Deity in Him we degrade and depreciate, if we insist 
on finding it only, or even as much, in certain (as it 
seems to us) abnormal effects; and not rather in the 
even daily tenour of a character, which just because it 
was quite perfect as human,—perfect in reference to the 


everyday difficulties of perfectness,—was therefore not 
G 


98 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


so much by virtue of material miracles (which might 
possibly be otherwise accounted for) as in the achieve- 
ment of moral perfectness, (which could have but one 
interpretation only) an unmistakable manifestation, in 
the central essence and meaning of human nature, of the 
character and power of God,” 

We look, then, at the picture of the Incarnate Christ,— 


not at some elements in it, but at the whole asa whole; - 


and feel that in the whole of it there is manifested to us 
—as, on the one hand, the inner character of God, so, on 
the other hand, the true inner character, or, in other words, 
the true Godward relation, of man. The more unreservedly 
we are able to think of Him, the Incarnate, as, in His In- 
carnation, really human, in feeling and act, in consciousness 
and character ;-(even though that very human character 
and consciousness are all the while—and He, in them, is 
not unconscious that they are—the direct image and 
utterance of God;) the more possible will it be to us to 
enter, with real sympathy and intelligence, into the teach- 
ing of His Humanity, and to see in it alike what humanity 
needed, and what humanity achieved, for perfect accept- 
ance with God. 

For our present purpose we may conveniently distin- 
guish two primary needs, and achievements, in the work of 
the Mediator. There is on the one hand, the sanctification 
of the present: on the other, the cancelling of the past. 
There is the rendering to Godward (which is also, in 
another aspect, the exhibition before men) of the offering 
of a living Holiness, in human conditions and character: 
and there is the awful sacrifice, in humanity, of a perfect 
contrition. For practical purposes we may speak of these 
respectively, as—the one the offering of Obedience, and 
the other the offering of Atonement: or again as the one 
the offering of the life, and the other the offering of the 
death. These last are not, of course, accurate distinctions, 


lee eee ee Se Me a a ee 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 99 


For obedience is not really separable from atonement. 
Obedience is atoning ; and the atonement itself can be ex- 
hibited as one great consummation of obedience. Again 
the life and the death are not really in contrast. Whatever 
is true of either, is in some degree true of the other. The 
death is the true and proper climax of the life. Only in 
death is the climax of obedience reached ; while the life is 
a sacrifice from end to end. 

Nevertheless the distinction is true in the main, and is 
convenient. The life, as apart from the death, is character- 
ized more immediately by the homage of perfect obedience 
than by the agony of extreme penitence. The death, 
viewed apart from the life, is characterized even more by 
the anguish which was requisite to perfect contrition, than 
by the normal homage to the character of God which con- 
sists in being holy. And of these two, if the sacrifice of 
atonement, the effectual cancelling of accomplished sin, is 
the more directly our subject in these pages as a whole; 
yet it will be indispensable, before turning exclusively to 
that, to think first a little of the other side. 

Primarily, then, for the present, our thought is of the life 
of consummate obedience, as a perfect manifestation, and 
offering, of holiness: holiness in terms of human condition 
and character; yet a perfectly adequate holiness; a re- 
sponse worthy of the holiness of God. How, in this aspect, 
shall we chiefly characterize the picture of the life as a 
whole? ‘The essential point of the truth, the truth which 
sums up all other and more partial truths, would seem to 
be this. It is a life of unreserved, unremitting, absolute, 
and clearly conscious, dependence. “The centre of His life 
is never in Himself. He is always, explicitly, the mani- 
festation, the reflection, the obedient son and servant, of 
another. There is no purpose of self; no element of self- 
will ; no possibility, even for a moment, of the imagination 
of separateness; no such thing, we may even say, as a 


100 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


consciousness alone and apart. “He is the representative 
agent of another, the Son of the Father, the Image of God. 
This is the entire description of His life and consciousness, 
“T am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me. < 
ye know neither Me nor My Father; if ye knew Me, ye 
would know My Father also.”? “He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father.” “I am come in My Father’s 
name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his 
own name, him ye will receive.”* “Many good works have 
I shewed you from the Father; for which of those works 
do ye stone Me?”* And it is in this context that we 
should probably do the fullest justice to the exact signifi- 
cance of those great words “I and the Father are one” 5— 
words, it is to be remembered, which are spoken actually 
by the Incarnate, the Christ, the Son of Man, in time, and 
in place, and through human brains and lips,—not simply, 
across infinities, by the Eternal Logos, 

“This relation then of absolute dependence upon Another 
—the Father, that is, God ; is the essential reality, never at 
any point relaxed or impaired. He can be indeed assailed 
by suggestions from without—the liability to this insult He 
has deliberately taken upon Himself—suggestions of the 
world, and of the flesh, and of the devil: but such sugges- 
tions, though they may torture and insult by presenting 
themselves with human intelligibleness, present themselves 
only to be absolutely repelled—repelled, as of course, for 
the sake, repelled in the fulness of the strength, of His 
unreserved union of dependence upon His God, 

There are two directions, both thoroughly intelligible to 
us, in which this essential dependence upon God expresses 
itself: and the two are in mutual correspondence with each 
other. The one is active and outward. The other is in- 
ward and contemplative. The one is the shaping of the 


1 John viii. 16, 19. 2 John xiv. 9. 3 John v. 43. 
# John x. 32. 5 John x. 30. 


SE ane oe Nee 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST? (21'):i6q!..:: 


life. The other is the feeding of the mind. The one is 
obedience, made manifest in all that is, or is not, either said 
or done; the other is communion of spirit, maintained in 
the way of secret meditation and prayer. 

Nothing really is more characteristic of the life than its 
continual prayerfulness. A general attitude or atmosphere 
of relation towards God does not for a moment take the 
place, or dispense with the need, of explicit prayer. The 
explicit prayer is direct, habitual, and of long continuance. 
It is not by mere passivity, but by active uplifting, by 
deliberate and strenuous effort, that the spirit within is kept 
serene and strong. “Jesus also having been baptized, and 
praying, the Heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost de- 
scended in a bodily form as a dove upon Him.” “Great 
multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed of their 
infirmities. But He withdrew Himself in the deserts and 
prayed.”* “And it came to pass in these days that He 
went out into the mountain to pray ; and He continued all 
night in prayer to God.”* “And after He had sent the 
multitudes away, He went up into the mountain apart to 
pray ; and when even was come, He was there alone.” 4 
“ And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, 
He took with Him Peter and John and James, and went 
up into the mountain to pray. And as He was praying, 
the fashion of His countenance was altered,” etc.5 “ And it 
came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that 
when He ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, ‘ Lord 
teach us to pray,” etc.6 “And He spake a parable unto 
them to the end that they ought always to pray and not to 
faint.”” “And every day He was teaching in the temple; 
and every night He went out, and lodged in the mount 
that is called the mount of Olives, and all the people came 


1 Luke iii. 21. ; 2 Luke v. 16. 
8 Hv SuavuKrepebwv ev TH Tporevyy Tov Oeov. Luke vi. 12. 
* Matt. xiv. 23. ® Luke ix. 28, 29, 6 Luke xi. 1. 


7 Luke xviii, 1. 


“io !AT@NEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [cxar. 


early in the morning to Him in the temple, to hear Him.”? 
“And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly ; and 
His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling 
down upon the ground.” There is a correspondence 
between the quiet majesty of the day, and the earnest com- 
muning of the night. Whether it be in the way of the 
tranquil wisdom of His doctrine, penetrating at once and 
uplifting and confounding ; or whether it be in the exercise 
of the prerogative of power which belongs to the unex- 
plored truth of human nature whose relation is perfected 
with God ;—whether it be for teaching or for what we call 
miracle ;—what He is amongst men is the counterpart of 
what He is towards God: He is Sovereign in majesty over 
man and over nature, by day, because His nights are spent 
in the communing of prayer with His God. 

Correlative to this is the perfect obedience on the side 
of the active life. It cannot be too much insisted on that 
the life of Christ is so characteristically obedience, that in 
it, and in it alone, is the complete revelation of what 
obedience means. “It is clear also, upon reflection, that the 
obedience which is so characteristic of His life is rendered 
always to God, His true Father, not to any man. There is 
obedience, of a kind,—submission, that is to say, and 
conformity, within strictly defined limits—to some human 
beings under some conditions,—the conformity of love to a 
loving mother and to her husband; the conformity of 
silent endurance to the madness of Jewish priests or of 
Roman soldiers. But this, even at its highest, is something 
not merely less complete, but different in kind from the 
obedience, at every moment, to His God. “He went down 
with them, and came to Nazareth; and He was subject 
unto them” ® does not mean that He was wholly dependent 
on them for the inspiration of His every emotion and 
thought. It means that He conformed to their wishes 

1 Luke xxi. 37, 38. 2 Luke xxii. 44. > Luke ii. 51. 


os ES 
eer 





v.] Thi OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 103 


in outward things, in which it was right that He should 
conform to their wishes. They had, up to a certain 


point, a claim: and the claim was frankly and fully, < 


recognised, But that the claim had absolute limitations, 


He had just shown them, with emphasis, amongst the _ 
doctors in the Temple at Jerusalem. So different indeed is «. 


this rélation towards them from the real meaning of 
obedience, as the meaning of obedience is revealed in His 
Godward life, that the difference would be conveniently 
expressed if we drew a contrast between being not dis- 
obedient, and being obedient. He was, to them, not 
disobedient. He traversed no wish of theirs to which 
He could conform, consistently with the Divine principle 
of His life. On the contrary, it was part of the Divine 
principle of His life that He should, as far as possible, so 
conform. But His dependence on God itself constituted 
the very essence of His life and consciousness. It was 
no negative abstinence from disobeying. It was the 
one positive principle which included all He did, and 
all He thought. » “There was nothing in Him which 
was not constituted what it was, by His unceasing 
continuity and completeness of dependence. He did 
nothing, said nothing, willed nothing, apart from God: 
nothing which was in such sense His, that it was not, 
ipso facto, as fully God’s in Him. His own phrases about 
Himself are full of this disclosure. “Jesus answered 
him, My Father worketh even until now, and I work.”1... 
“Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Verily, 
verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, 
but what He seeth the Father doing; for what things 
soever He doeth, these the Son also doeth in like 
manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him 
all things that Himself doeth.”” ,. . “I can of Myself do 
nothing; as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is righteous ; 
1 John v. 17. 2 John v. 19, 20, 


104 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that 
sent Me.” i«.. “The works which the Father hath given Me 
to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me 
that the Father hath sent Me.”?.... “As the living Father 
sent Me, and I live because of the Father; so he that 
eateth Me, he also shall live because of Me.”* ... “They 
said therefore unto Him, Where is Thy Father? Jesus 
answered, Ye know neither Me nor My Father ; if ye knew 
Me, ye would know My Father also.”* . . . “Jesus there- 
fore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then 
shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of 
Myself, but as the Father hath taught Me, I speak these 
things. And He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not 
left Me alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing 
to Him.”® , . , “I speak the things which I have seen with 
My Father ; and ye also do the things which ye heard from 
your father.”® “We must work the works of Him that sent 
Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man 
can work.”’ ,.. “If I do not the works of My Father, 
believe Me not. But if I do them, though ye believe not 
Me, believe the works ; that ye may know and understand 
that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father,”®, , 
“ Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the 
Father in Me? The words that I say unto you, I speak 
not from Myself; but the Father abiding in Me doeth His 
works,” ® 

Phrases like these reiterate for us, with great emphasis, 
the central truth, that the focus or centre of His being 
as man, was not in Himself as man, but in His Father, 
that is, God. Considering indeed who the self is who 
speaks, there is something most remarkable, and strangely 
suggestive, in the reiterated emphasis with which He 


1 John v. 30. 2John v. 36. $ John vi. 57. 
‘John viii. 19. 5 John viii. 28, 29. 6 John viii. 38. 
7 John ix. 4. 8 John x. 37, 3% ® John xiv, 10, 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST 105 


repeats the negative, disclaiming either initiative, or capacity, 
as belonging to Himself. “I can of Myself do nothing.” 
“The Son can do nothing of Himself.” “The words that 
I speak unto you I speak not of Myself.” There is 
no evading the directness of the phrases. “Not of 
Myself” is not only a form of assertion which is capable of 
being applied to the Son of God incarnate ; but it is plain 
that we shall miss a truth which is specially emphasized for 
us, if we do not allow the very fullest weight to the negative 
which it asserts. 

It becomes, then, a matter of importance to insist that, 
in expressing Himself in reality of manhood, and the 
feelings, emotions, and conditions of manhood, He deliber- 
ately put on—not indeed the personal capacity of sinning, 
but at least (if we may use the expression) the hypothetical 
capacity of sinning, the nature through which sin could 
naturally approach and suggest itself: and therefore, that 
the statement just made, that the centre of His being as 
man was not in Himself but in God, is not so much a 
tautological truism, as a most important truth. There 
was, so far, in His human nature, the natural machinery 
for, or capability of, rebelling, that the reiterated negative, 
“not My own,” “not Myself,” does deny something. To 
say that He was dependent upon God does not say simply 
and merely, though it does say by implication, that He 
was dependent upon Himself. To be clothed with human 
flesh, and to be accessible to human emotions, though 
it does not mean the actual setting up of a human self in 
antithesis to His divine self; does at least mean a 
providing with the natural capacities for separation and 
rebellion ; it does mean that the pressure towards rebellion 
could be felt, and that there could be stern repression and 
effort in obedience, so that the consummation of obedience 
could be, and was, learned, through inward, as well as 
outward, suffering. If there was not an actualized, there 


106 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


was (so to speak) an imaginary and hypothetical possibility 


of a distinct self, willing otherwise than in accordance with 
God’s will; a possibility which is not really possible, for it 
would have meant literally chaos, the very self-contradiction 
of the Being of God ; but which, nevertheless, dimly images 
itself at some supreme moments, to the imagination, and 
gives at least some meaning to the refusal of separateness, 
There would be no meaning in the assertion made of God 
as God, that He “spoke not from Himself” or that “ He 
did nothing of Himself.” The solemnity of such assertions, 
as made of the Incarnate, depends upon this; that He had 
taken to Himself the external capacity, and as it were 
machinery, for selfishness.” There was a hypothetical or 
conceivable selfishness,—the possible imagination of a 
rebellious self;—not actual indeed, nor actually possible 
without chaos: yet something to be, by moral strain, 
controlled and denied ; something which made self-denial 
in the Incarnate, not an empty phrase, but a stupendous 
act or energy of victorious moral goodness. Of Himself 
~ He uses the phrase self, in this manner, in order to deny 
it. He uses it, not of His Eternal Being, as God, but of 
that human possibility which, if it could have been realized, 
would have been rebellion. And it is this strange, dim, 


‘| vision or idea of a possibility—-which nevertheless is not 


~ possible,—which gives their deepest dread and mystery 
» to some of the most mysterious—and most appalling— 
moments of all: such as “now is My soul troubled; and 
what shall I say? Father save Me from this hour. But 
for this cause came I unto this hour. Father glorify Thy 
name.”4 And above all, the awful cry of Gethsemane 
“QO my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass away 
from me.” 2—which yet passes on at once, in the same cry, 
into “nevertheless not My will but Thine, be done!” 
“Not as I will, but as Thou”: “not My will, but Thine”: 


1 John xii. 27. 2 Matt. xxvi. 39. 8 Luke xxii, 42. 





v.] THE OBEDIENCE OF CHRIST ~ 107 


this, it may be, is the nearest approach to the impossible 
possibility of separation. But even in this form it is 
unspeakably terrible to” contemplate. And meanwhile 
this whole thought is a commentary, full of the most 
mysterious significance, upon His Human _ obedience. 
Some glimpse at least it gives us into the truth that 
His unceasing dependence, of moral and spiritual being, 
upon His God, is not an idle assertion as of a mere 
necessity which could not be otherwise; it is not mere 
inert passiveness (as it were) of unmoved self-identity, 
but a real energy, and revelation, of active and most 
stupendous obedience. 

The secret then of His exhibition of obedience, His 
revelation of the true rationale of human life, is here: 
He was absolutely loyal in dependence; He was 
absolutely without any self-reservation, any nursing of 
separateness of self: He was the exposition, by willing 
reflection, of Another. So it was that He was the 
perfect exhibition, (under conditions not only of human 
nature in its glory, but of most limited and suffering 
mortality) of the Being and character of God. _ 

There is one other consideration which follows from 
what has been said. It will be felt that the things said, in 
their own character, and with them the passages of S. 
John’s gospel with which they are chiefly. connected, 
belong primarily to the exposition of the essential 
relation, between God, regarded as Incarnate, between 
Jesus Christ, the Human expression of Deity, and the 
God on whom it was His human perfectness altogether 
to depend. They are not primarily words of revelation 
as to the timeless relations between the First and the 
Second Persons of the Eternal Trinity. There may 
indeed be a very deep connection between the one of 
these relations and the other. The tracing of such a 
connection would belong chiefly to the explanation of 


108 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [char. v. 


the causes, so far as they are in any way cognizable by us, 
why it was in the Person of the Eternal Logos that God 
was Incarnated. But whatever there may be to be said 
on such a subject, the passages themselves ought not to 
be cited, at least so directly or primarily, as theological 
statements about the Persons, as such, of the Eternal 
Trinity ; as rather about the essential truth of the relation 
of the Incarnate, as Incarnate, to the Eternal; the relation 
of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, to His God and Father, 
—obedient dependence on whom was the Breath of His 
Life. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 


THE relation of Christ to sin, as the Atoner, is more 
mysterious than that of His relation, in obedient life, to 
holiness. But nothing can exceed the directness with 
which the relation to sin is emphasized in scripture, 
or the cardinal place of this relation in the Christian 
creed. The relation to sin is absolute, unreserved, 
personal—though the sin is not in Himself. “Him who 
knew no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf.” 

Elsewhere the relation to sin is stated in a different 
way, “ God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful 
flesh, and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.”? 

The central point in these two forms of statement is 
by no means obviously the same. In either case indeed 
the act is the act of God—God the Eternal, the Essential, 
the One God. In either case the act is the act of God, 
wrought in and through Jesus Christ; through Him, that 
is, who is the perfect expression of God in terms of human 
_ conditions, and consciousness, and character; through 
God the Incarnate, God the Son of Man; through the 
Son of Man who, because He is Son of Man, is therefore, 
of necessity, Son of God. But this act of God through 
Christ, this act of the Incarnate, which is the act of the 
Eternal, is described in two varying forms. The one 
says that He “was made sin,” the other that He, in flesh 
and for flesh, “condemned sin,” 


ia Cor. v.21, 2 Rom. viii. 3. 
109 


110 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


The considerations which are before us in the present 
chapter are such, it is to be hoped, as will naturally tend 
to bring the two modes of thought, from apparent contrast, 
more and more towards real coincidence. 

He condemned sin—that is, there is an aspect of the 
Atonement according to which it can be summed up as 
a pronouncing, by Jesus Christ, of the judgement and 
sentence of eternal Righteousness against all human sin. 
It is He who is the judging and condemning Righteous- 
ness. He was made sin—that is, He the eternal | 
Righteousness, in judging sin, judged it not in another, 
but judged it rather, as a penitent judges it, within 
Himself; He surrendered Himself for the judgement 
that He pronounced; He took, in His own Person, 
the whole responsibility and burthen of its penance; 
He stood, that is, in the place, not of a judge simply, 
nor of a mere victim, but of a voluntary penitent— 
wholly one with the righteousness of God in the sacrifice 
of Himself. 

Remember what it is that the idea of Atonement 
requires. The idea of effectual atonement for sin requires 
at once a perfect penitence and a power of perfect holiness, 
Man has sinned. Man is unrighteous. If I am un- 
righteous, what could make me absolutely righteous 
again? If indeed my repentance, in reference to the 
past, could be quite perfect, such penitence would mean 
that my personality was once more absolutely one with 
Righteousness in condemning sin even in, and at the 
cost of, myself. Such personal re-identity with Righteous- 
ness, if it were possible, would be a real contradiction of 
my past. It would be atonement, and I should, in it, be 
once more actually righteous. 

If such relation to the past were possible, it would 
by the same possibility be possible also that my life, 
now and henceforth, should be, in outward activity and 





vi.) THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST III 


in inward spirit, perfect,—the flawless homage of a Divine 
obedience. In relation to the past, the present, and the 
future, I should have become quite perfectly and con- 
tinuously and Divinely righteous. 

For atoning and living Righteousness there are 
necessary a condemnation which would perfectly obliterate 
from the spirit the presence of past sin; and the present 
and unceasing homage of perfect righteousness. But if 
these two things are necessary, it is just these two things 
which are, in universal human experience, alike ideal and 
alike impossible. 

Both these things were attained, in literal perfection 
of full fact, in the life and in its climax, which is the 
death, of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, 

It is worth while to say with some emphasis that we, 
in the present chapter, have nothing, properly, to do with 
the relation of Him, or of these things in Him, zo us; with 
the, question how, what He was, or what He did, really 
alters or really characterizes, in any one of us, our own 
personality. That is a large part indeed of any intelligible 
statement of the doctrine of Atonement. But, quite apart 
from us, it is our object for the present to recall and con- 
sider what these things were 2x Himself. 

Now nothing is more familiar than the thought of 
Jesus Christ on earth as being, within the conditions of 
mortality, the perfect reflection of the will, the perfect 
expression of the character, of the Eternal God. For 
He was the Eternal God, expressing Himself in, and 
as, human character, within those penal disabilities of 
humanity, of which death is at once the symbol and the 
climax. 

In two ways we think of Him as a revelation, within 
humanity, of God. First, in the mutual relations of human 
life, we think of Him as revealing the moral character, 
the goodness and love, of God, “Have I been so long 


112 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (crap. 


time with you, and yet dost thou not know me, Philip? 
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”1 And 
secondly, in the relation of man to God—the absolute 
dependence of unbroken communion between the limited 
and mortal and the Eternal—He reveals the true secret, 
and the possible glory, of mortal humanity. It is of Him, 
the disabled, the limited, the mortal, that S. John can say, 
“We beheld His glory, glory as of the only-begotten from 
the Father:”2 “We have seen, and bear witness, and 
declare unto you the life, the eternal life which was with 
the Father, and was manifested unto us.”* This Godward 
relation of man, wholly dependent, and reflecting flaw- 
lessly that whereupon he depends, expresses itself within 
mortal conditions, inwardly and outwardly: in outward 
action it is manifested as obedience that never wavers; 
in inward consciousness it realizes itself as the un- 
interrupted communion of meditation and prayer. 
Besides, then, the moral revelation of God as Love, 
which is in every contact of Christ with other men, the 
Divine Righteousness is visibly reflected in His perfect 
obedience, and consciously realized in the effort of His 
perfect prayer. The prayerfulness of spirit is not a thing 
wholly separate from the active obedience; it is but 
another aspect of that same reality, the mirrored reflection 
of the Divine glory, in the Godward relations of human 
character. 

It is no part of the present purpose to try to draw 
this thought out, or illustrate in detail its manifestations 
in the human life. Consider rather how, even in this 
aspect, the death is the necessary climax of the life. We 
are as yet thinking of the life of Christ not as atonement 
but as obedience; not as in reference to the past, or 
the undoing of accomplished sin, but as in reference 
to the present, as being the homage of a living holiness, 

1 John xiv. 9. 2 John i. 14. § 1 John i, 2. 


Eg as Nay I oe a 





vi.J THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 113 


the mirroring of Divine character in mortal obedience,— 
human will as the adequate response to, and expression 
of, infinite Righteousness. Even in this aspect, that 
the conscious identity of will with God (expressed on 
one side in unceasing prayer; on another in unceasing 
obedience) might stand triumphant over the utmost 
straining of all counter-influences which could possibly 
be brought to bear against it, it was necessary that the 
drama of Bethlehem and Nazareth should find its 
culmination on Calvary. For what did He who was 
God express Himself in and as man, under the dis- 
abilities of humanity suffering and mortal, but that this 
homage of obedient righteousness, this will-identity of 
man with God, might shine out ‘through, and in, precisely 
the conditions of mortal suffering? He would serve 
God as man, He would perfect obedience in fallen human 
nature; and therefore He must be liable to feel, that 
He might triumph through and over, the uttermost 
solicitation to which His human consciousness could 
make His Person accessible, towards the possibility of 
igri if but for a moment, of His suffering will from 
God.“ “Lo, Iam come to do Thy will, O God”—“a body 
didst Thou prepare for me.”! The body was the avenue of 
access of suffering, and, through suffering, of temptation. 
Whatever may be true of angels or devils, the body is 
the avenue of consciousness to men. The body, then, 
was to be, in Him, at once the scene, and the instrument, 
of that absolutely victorious crushing of temptation which 
is the offering to the Father of a mortal will perfectly 
identical with the absolute righteousness of God.,, 

But it could not be but that the body itself would 
be wrung to death in the process. In a sense indeed 


this is true—and it is a truth not of terror so much as 


of hope—about every single child of man who shall die. 


1 Hebrews x. 5-7. 
H 


114 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [cuape. 


We do not yet know the possibilities of humbling or of © 
purifying discipline which may lie hid within the experi- 
ence of dying. But this is another thought, which we do 
but glance at in passing.” For the climax of temptation, 
for the climax of solicitation addressed through the body 
to the will, it was necessary that the body should be 
pressed to the point of its own destructions’to the point, 
that is, at which the stress of temptation should literally 
have exhausted its whole possibility. 

We do well in this connection to remember that sin 
is deadening to sensitiveness, both of body and spirit; 
that to consciousness of guilt there is a sense of actual 
righteousness in suffering ; and that increasing infirmities 
make death itself (as it were) more and more natural. 

Remember, in the light of familiar experience such 
as this, that in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth,—as the 
whole harmony of bodily life was unique in its perfectness, 
so the sensitiveness to pain, and the humiliation of weak- 
ness, were unique: and as the right to life, and the 
dignity of life, were unparalleled, so the outrage—the 
utter contradiction—involved in dying was immeasurable, 

Again, remember, that the death of Jesus Christ was 
wholly unlike the death of any martyr,—not only in the 
fact (vast as that is!) that the martyr is always only 
strong with and in Jesus Christ; but also in proportion 
as the power of Jesus over His torments and His 
tormentors was unique. It is true that every martyr’s 
suffering is, in a sense, self-chosen. Every martyr’s prison 
is necessarily locked, as men have sometimes said with 
a strange blindness of scorn, “upon the inside”; that 
is, every martyr properly so-called could have avoided 
his suffering by an act of will,—and only by a certain 
strain of will he has come to be where he is. But this, 
after all, is only true of him within limits,—and it is 
becoming every moment less true, as his _ sufferings 





vi.) THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 115 


intensify. Once, at a certain point in the past, it was 
true; but every pang carries him further from the 
possibility of not suffering ; he cannot foil the power of pain 
in mid-course, neither can he repair any damage that is 
done. But here,—in Jesus Christ,—all the power of all His 
murderers is His own, and in His own hand. Very slowly 
He is passing through the anguish which kills by inches. 
Voluntarily, from moment to moment, He is choosing 
the pain; voluntarily He is being crushed under the 
deadly pressure of the effort of evil against Him. Only 
try to imagine the unimaginable pressure of this last 
concentrated temptation upon His human will. For 
none apart from Himself can put one pang upon Him. 
One moment’s unwillingness to suffer—and He can 
wholly be free! Every separate item in the anguish 
is allowed by Himself. One moment’s reluctance on 
His part, one moment’s impulse to draw back, even one 
moment’s hesitation of will, might instantly have ended 
it all. But that moment never came. He who but now 
healed the severed ear with a touch, He who might 
wield when He would (He said it last night of Himself) 
the might of twelve legions of angels, is not shorn now 
of His power. “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, now 
come down from the cross, that we may see and believe”! 
—so they shouted in their mockery—*“ He saved others; 
Himself He cannot save.”? It was not the power that 
was lacking, but the will. “Therefore doth My Father 
love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take 
it again. No man taketh it away from Me; but I lay 
it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and 
I have power to take it again.” 8 

The power was not lacking if there had been—if there 
could have been—the will to exert the power! But the 
power, if used—the power with the will to use it—would 

1 Mark xv. 32. 3 Matt. xxvii. 42. 3 John x. 17, 18. 


116  #$ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


have proved the very opposite to what they supposed. It 
was the power, with the will to hold it unused, which 
proved Him to be what He was. And the fact of the 
power, with the pressure of every element of His human 
consciousness to use it, are the measure of the majesty of 
the restraining will, the perfecting of obedience in man to 
God. Do we not recognize thus how the tearing of the 
body inch by inch to its own destruction is necessary for 
the climax, not only of what we distinguish as bodily 
suffering, but of that supreme strain on the flawless identity 
of the will, in suffering human nature, with God, which is 
the guileless offering of a perfect obedience? 

But in all this there is no direct thought of the death of 
Christ, as reparation or atonement, in reference to consum- 
mated sin. I know indeed that no aspect of that death 
can really be viewed completely in isolation. Much of 
what has been said already only finds its full meaning in 
the light of aspects which have been kept out of sight. 
But we know that when a man has fatally sinned it is not 
enough, even if it were possible, that he should be now, and 
from now, however good and obedient. There must be 
something in the direction of undoing of the past, without 
which indeed the present obedience would not be in its true 
sense really possible, but which certainly cannot be ex- 
pressed only in terms of present obedience. 

Now we, so far, have been trying to express the neces- 
sity and the meaning of Calvary, as it were, in terms of 
present obedience. And for this very reason what has 
hitherto been said must be felt to be only a part—to many 
minds or moods the lesser part only—of the meaning of 
the Cross. Assuredly the death of Jesus Christ had 
another relation. It was not obedience only, but atone- 
ment; not only perfect, in the present, as homage; but 
sovereign, in relation to accomplished sin, as undoing. 


1 Hebrews x. 40, 








vie] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 117 


He had taken upon Him, as the living expression of 
Himself, a nature which was weighed down—not merely 
by present incapacities, but by present incapacities as part 
of the judicial necessary result of accepted and inherent 
sinfulness. Human nature was not only disabled but 
suilty ; and the disabilities were themselves a consequence, 
and aspect, of the guilt. In respect of this guilt of sin, 
consummated and inhering, human nature could only be 
purified by all that is involved in the impossible demand of 
a perfect penitence. Except it had also the character of 
perfect penitence atoning for the past, even the splendid 
perfectness of His present will-offering of obedience would 
be less than what was required for the re-identifying of 
human character with God. 

Remember what perfect penitence would involve. It 
would involve nothing less than a perfect re-identification 
of the character and the will—in a word, of the whole 
personality—with righteousness: an identification with 
righteousness immediately in the form of inexorable con- 
demnation of every shadow of unrighteousness even in, and 
at the cost of, the self. Now the absolute perfectness of 
such a personal self-identifying with righteousness is made 
once for all impossible by any act of personal identity with 
sin. The least real affinity of the self with sin impairs the 
possibility of that perfect self-identity with righteousness 
which is necessary for the consummation of perfect peni- 
tence. Penitence, in the perfectness of its full meaning, is 
not even conceivably possible, except it be to the person- 
ally sinless. 

Is penitence possible in the personally sinless? I 
should perhaps be entitled to emphasize in reply each of 
these two thoughts: the first, that if the perfection of aton- 
ing penitence cannot be achieved by the personally sinless, 
it will become on reflection more and more manifest that it 
cannot be either achieved or even conceived at all; and the 


118 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


second, that it is just this—the voluntary sin-bearing of the 
sinless, the self-identity with righteousness in condemnation 
of sin of One whose self-identity, though sinless, could take 
the form of surrender of the self in the very attitude of the 
ideal penitent, which is, if anything is, vital to the whole 
history and being of the Gospel, or the Church, of Jesus 
Christ. But I do not wish to urge anything at this 
moment from the side of dogmatic authority. 

Is reality of penitence for personal sin really possible in 
what is not the self-identical personality that sinned? We 
might answer perhaps by saying that, in greater degree or 
in less, it is a fact of everyday experience. The law of 
vicarious suffering or vicarious energy, as a principle run- 
ning everywhere throughout human life, is not suspended 
when we pass within the region of consciousness of sin. 
Others do in fact suffer and sorrow on their reprobate’s 
behalf, not only with their reprobate, but more deeply and 
keenly than he does or can for himself. Not only the pain 
is in their lives, but the shame is in their hearts—in pro- 
portion, it may be, to his shamelessness and their love, 
Nay, more, this reality of shame in them, the product of the 
nearness of their love, is your strongest element of hope 
for him. If there are those, near and dear, who with un- 
dimmed purity of heart and undiscouraged love will not 
weary of entering into the burden of his shame—thank 
God! you feel that, in the atmosphere of that vicarious 
penitence wrapping him round, and stealing, almost as it 
were imperceptibly, as the breath of love, into his life and 
soul, you would almost dare to pledge the certainty of his 
coming salvation. In that intense reality of a penitence 
which is vicarious lies the heart of your hope for him of a 
personal penitence. Do we give full weight to the truths 
which lie in this direction ? 

We have done well, no doubt, to learn both to under- 
stand and to emphasize the distinctive value of each several 


eae 
=o os 


c beg gta fegh lm 
== yy 





VI.) THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 119 


personality, regarded as apart by itself. Individual re- 
sponsibility, individual value, individual meaning and 
destiny—it is vital that ‘we should learn this lesson to the 
full. But even this, vital though it be, is a truth which can 
be pressed beyond the proportion of truth. Is it not true 
that we have in many ways overdone our lesson, and 
exaggerated, in common thought and theory, the mutual 
exclusiveness of human personality? Are we not all, after 
all, much more of one piece than we are willing to 
recognize? We cannot either do or suffer, cannot lose or 
win, cannot, however secretly, either sin or repent, to our- 
selves alone. Whatever is really personal to, or a part of, 
ourselves tends to become, in greater degree or in less, by 
processes gradual but sure, personal to and a part of many 
selves besides. 

If we take our stand on the truth that no man can 
be, or can stand for, another, we may at least recognize 
that even this truth, even in this form, is not equally 
true in all cases. It is capable, at least, of degrees. 
Even the naked thought of the substitution of one 
person for another is not, under all conditions, equally © 
unimaginable. “One Englishman for another” is more 
reasonable as a principle of equity among the South 
Sea islanders than in the police-courts of London. It 
is not very profitable to try to construct illustrations, not 
one of which can possibly be adequate ; but yet—a brother 
for a brother, a wife for a husband, a father for a child— 
there may be more potency of meaning behind such 
phrases than our off-hand logic or our mechanical 
systems can allow. True, we never reach the climax 
quite. But if each remains separate still, we can at least 
see real degrees of approach towards something more 
than a superficial or imaginary unity. If those who 
sometimes, in stature and tone and eye, seem most 
really to reproduce one another’s image, have added to 


120 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHapP. 


this outward (itself more than an outward) resemblance, 
a real affinity of mental capacity and conviction, the 
same intellectual affinities, the same tone and temper as 
well of character as of thought; and further than this, 
are joined together in one spirit of mutually devoted 
affection, each finding his joy in the life, and more than 
ready to share all the trial and death, of the other, you 
do not indeed transcend their inexorable distinctness ; 
but you do see glimpses at least of a truth more ultimate 
about them than the distinctness—a truth of which their 
distinctness is no longer so much the contradiction as the 
necessary condition; so that the very distinctness needs and 
claims to be, if not annulled, yet merged at last in a reality 
of unity more ultimate and more essential than itself. 

If we do not, most of us, go far in fact towards this 
transcending unity, this may only too possibly be because, 
intrenched in the circle of our own self-regard, we are 
only too well content not to go out into the vital ex- 
periences of another—far less of those who need us 
throughout the world: we shrink from the self-expenditure 
of sympathy, and prefer the sundered to the corporate 
life, hiding away ourselves, for ourselves, within ourselves, 
But we can hardly blind ourselves to the fact that the 
Christian Spirit, as such, is always making towards such 
a transcending of the barriers of sundered personalities 
—such a living of each not only for but in others; and 
that those who have possessed it most eminently are 
those whose spirit has had the most eminent power of 
reproducing itself in the spirits of others. This rather 
is the crown—than the breaking down—of personality, 
Never perhaps is the good man so completely, so royally, 
himself as when the inherent force of what he is, is be- 
coming the vital principle of what others are also with 
him. Need I plead that sympathy is a Christian ideal 
in a sense far higher than that which we are mostly 


Pe Ne ee 
in ai ae ee ales 


eli 





vi.] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 121 


content to allow to the word? Or that, if there is one 
region more than another from which that sympathy 
cannot be excluded, because it is there most vitally at 
home, it is the region of the suffering and shame which 
are the outcome of consciousness of sin. 

But it will perhaps be felt that, real and potent though 
sympathy in penitence may be, at least the penitence of 
the sympathetic friend cannot be as penitence so real or 
personal as that of the culprit himself. On the contrary, 
even this, so far as it is true at all, is true only by reason 
of the extreme limitations of our power or will to © 
sympathize. It is true in proportion to our incapacity 
of unselfishness. But wherever the power of unselfishness 
begins to approximate at all towards its ideal there we 
shall be able to find, even within experience, that the 
penitence of the good man,on behalf of his reprobate, 
not only anticipates and leads the way and shapes the 
possibility towards the penitence of the reprobate himself, 
but also that it is far keener, far deeper, far more real 
as penitence than anything of which as yet the reprobate 
is personally capable. It is the presence of sin within 
the personality which blunts the edge of detestation of 
sin. I long to hate, and I do hate in a measure, the 
sin which tyrannizes over my free will. But just because 
it is my own, because it still has place and power within 
my own consciousness of sin, therefore I cannot hate it 
with the full single-hearted intensity of hatred with which 
another might hate it whose self was untainted by it; 
with which I should hate it if all its disabling power were 
wholly melted, and I were personally one again with the 
righteousness of God. 

Is the penitence of the sinful self the deepest reality 
of penitence? I will ask you to think of a father, or a 
mother—pure, holy, tender, loving-hearted—whose own 
beloved only child, son or daughter, is branded with the 


122 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


deep reality of irretrievable disgrace. I will ask you first 
to compare the grief of such a mother over the shame of 
a stranger, and over the shame of her own, her best- 
beloved. Even towards the stranger there might be 
the deepest concern, the tenderest, truest, most winning 
and restorative sympathy. But the shame, which is her 
own child’s, is her own. For herself, the light is gone out 
of her life. Her heart is not merely, as in the other case, 
tenderly concerned. Her heart is broken. 

And then, secondly, compare this grief of the mother 
with the grief of the child, whose own the shame is. 
Her own the shame is, because the sin is her own—it 
is part of her very self. But this very fact that the 
sinful will is her own, while it may fill her penitence 
with wildness and alarm, blunts its edge, and dims its 
truth. The wild alarm, whose climax would be despair, 
the conscious haunting presence of the sin, is a paralyzing, 
not an intensifying, of the power of penitence. The 
penitence of the child may be fiercer and wilder; but 
it is, in comparison, shallow, mixed, impotent, unreal. 
But the mother’s anguish is not less anguish, but more, 
because it is without that confusing presence of the sin. 
If it is less despairing, it is more profound. Even now 
the sorrow of the child is checked, steadied, solemnized, 
uplifted, by the felt sanctity of the mother’s sorrow—a 
sorrow at once more heartbroken and more calm of heart: 
a sorrow more sorrowful truly, yet, even in sorrow, more 
identified, somewhere far back even now, with a trust 
which cannot die. Yes, it is the mother’s heart which 
is broken for sin; broken even, it may be, unto death. 
The child’s heart is less likely to break. The true 
realization of shame, the true steady insight into sin, 
is dulled, not sharpened, by the indwelling of sin. The 
heart of the child is not able to break—at least yet. 
Only long afterwards, if at all, when penitence has at 





vi.J THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 123 


last done its slow, penetrating, tranquillizing work, will 
sin, as sin, be felt and seen as it is. Meanwhile the 
penitent anguish of the mother who is holy is, even in 
proportion to her reality of holiness, more undimmed, 
keener of edge, deeper in truth_—in the shame of the 
child with whom, in nature and in love, she is wholly 
self-identified—than it is, than it can be, in the child of 
whose mind and will the sin itself is still part. 

It is sometimes hastily assumed that the possibility 
of anything, in such a mother, which can really be called 
penitence, depends upon the fact that the mother is 
herself at least partly responsible for the sin. How much 
more might she have done, which she has not done, to 
guard her child against it? At the least, is it not through 
her, in measure, that the child is partaker of the nature 
in which Adam sinned, and all mankind is sinful ? 

Such thoughts, if brought forward to set the illustration 
aside, strangely misconceive the truth. It is quite true, 
in fact, that there may be a sense in the mother of a 
responsibility which is partly her own, Indeed no human 
mother can wholly be without this. But this, so far from 
constituting, in her, the possibility of a genuine penitence, 
is the one thing which really spoils the perfectness of it. 
In proportion as the fault of the mother is graver, her 
capacity of true penitence vanishes. If the child’s sin 
is mainly the mother’s fault, to look for any deep realities 
of penitence to the mother would be a contradiction and 
absurdity. She must needs be callous more or less; she 
may even be exultant. It would be quite impossible 
that her heart should break. The conditions, in fact, 
which we find in the holy mother are precisely the 
opposite of what they would be if her power of peni- 
tence corresponded with her share in the sin. Her 
power of penitence, that is penitence indeed, depends 
not upon the extent to which the guilt is her own, 


124 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


but rather upon the extent to which it is not. It 
depends upon two things; and will be found to vary in 
depth, in precise proportion as these two things are real 
in her. The first is the extent of her own self-identifica- 
tion—not with guilt but with holiness. This does not, 
of course, reach absolute identity with holiness. But the 
nearer her approach to perfect holiness, the greater, not 
the less, will be the depth of her capacity of anguish of 
heart. And the other is the completeness of her capacity 
of identifying her very self with the being of her child. 
The smallest touch of selfishness blunts the edge of 
this. Its perfectness would be the very triumph of love. 
Here again, it is true in fact that no earthly mother has 
reached the absolute perfectness of love, any more than 
the absolute perfectness of holiness, But in each case the 
tendency and the character are clear. It is in proportion 
as she approximates towards perfectness of love on the one 
side, as towards perfectness of holiness on the other, that 
the capacity deepens in her, more and more, of penitence 
absolutely heartbroken for sins which are not—and because 
they are not—her own. So far as the holiness alone is 
concerned, we might find other cases as illustrative as that 
of a mother. But perhaps there is no other relation, in 
human experience, which enables us equally to realize how 
far unselfishness can go towards the self-identifying of one 
person with another in the unity of nature and of love, 

Of nature and of love! The unity is primarily in 
nature. Its foundation is a physical reality. But notice 
how much more this may mean in one case than 
another: how much more, for example, it does mean of 
a true mother to her child than of an English traveller 
to a fugitive African. Bone of her bone, and flesh of her 
flesh, her child was to her as a very expression of herself. 
In her child she lived. In her child’s growth and good- 
ness she expanded. In her child’s fall she fell. If unity 


v.] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 125 


of nature is predicable not only of these, but also of such 
as seem furthest away from each other, the highest and the 
lowest in humanity, do not let us therefore be deceived 
into levelling down the proper idea of the phrase (even, 
so to say, upon its physical side) to the least which it is 
capable of meaning. Rather, the most which it is capable 
of meaning in familiar experience is as a hint to suggest 
how very much more, than our experience, lies within the 
true ideal possibilities of the phrase. 

But whatever be its unexplored possibilities, no doubt 
one aspect of the unity of nature is an equality of status, 
a sharing of common conditions both of faculty and of 
disability. ‘The one shares the nature of the other. That 
is, the modes of consciousness, the avenues of pain and 
ease, sorrow and joy, are broadly in the one what they are 
in the other. And if under stress of temptation the one 
has fallen, the other does not view the meaning of the 
temptation, or the fall, as a spectator merely from without. 
The same sense of temptation can, through avenues of the 
same nature, have intelligible access to the consciousness 
of the other. What has happened is not merely appre- 
hended from without. It can, with whatever shock of 
horror, be felt from within. The power of entering into 
the consciousness of the sinful requires—not indeed a will 
that has actually sinned, but at least a conscious presence, 
in the nature, of the instruments, as it were, and capacities 
for sinning—an avenue for the appeal of sin to the con- 
sciousness—if only the will could conceivably be to sin! 
The underlying conditions for sin-consciousness are there ; 
and with them a certain capacity of being degraded in the 
degradation of those in whom the same nature is a mode 
of sin. But it must be enough to have indicated thus what 
possibilities do really underlie the meaning even of what 
often seems to us to mean so little as the union of a 
common human nature. 


126 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


Meanwhile, whatever is true fundamentally or potentially 
in nature springs into its full and vivid realization in the 
rich self-expenditure of conscious love. It is here that we 
recognize most of all what the depth may be of a mother’s 
identification with her child: we recognize that in the 
power of love it is what it is; and recognize also thereby 
that if the love were but greater and more perfect still, the 
unity also could mean what now it can not. If its obvious 
limit is the limitation of love, what would the capacities be 
of union, with the living experience of another, of one 
whose love was absolutely without limit? If the sorrowing 
mother serves best to illustrate what human union may 
mean, in nature and in love, she illustrates it by what she 
is, rather as whetting the imagination than as sating it: she 
illustrates it by what she is, only as a sort of preliminary to 
suggesting it by what she fails to be. We look at infinite 
things in the light of most finite experience. Our human 
illustrations do approximate: they are strikingly real. 
Yet they are more striking still in the silent witness which 
they ever bear to that beyond themselves, whose reality 
they postulate, of whose nature they are eloquent, by 
whose breath they are; but which transcends them still. 

So we pass on, at times perhaps hardly even knowing 
how far our words are more immediately spoken of that 
human mother, or of Him whose Spirit finds an echo in her 
love. But remember, in either case (for the one includes 
the other), in reference to what it is that we have dwelt on 
the thought of this possibility, between human beings, of 
unity—in nature and in love. It is in reference to con- 
summated sin. It is that we may see the better what is 
involved if a person, whose own the sin is not, is thus 
really, in nature and in love, united with the experience of © 
sin. What is that experience of sin in one of whose person 
the actual sin is not part? 

There are some two or three thoughts which are vital 


Vi.] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 127 


to the conception of it. Let us put first this capacity of 
self-identity with the sinful, which we see—not con- 
summated, indeed, but much more than suggested, in the 
case of the holy mother. Remember that it is true of her 
just in proportion as she makes real these possibilities of 
nature and of love. So far as she at all falls short, or 
shrinks back, from what her direct union of nature might 
mean, or so far as there is a limit, somewhere, to the self- 
expending effort of her love, so far, behold! after all she is 
not personally touched—or not touched to the quick: she 
can look on—and let her culprit go: her heart need not 
break—for the shame is not in zt! 

But if on one side her shame, unto death, can only be 
the result of a rare completeness of unity of nature realized 
in love, on the other hand it depends also upon a com- 
pleteness, no less rare, of realization of sin. And again, if 
the absolute perfectness of sympathetic self-identity with 
others, in the full truth of the words, is possible only when 
the union of nature is unlimited, because the love is 
literally infinite; it is at least as plain that a full realiza- 
tion of the character and consequence of sin is possible 
only in the light of a full realization of the character of 
holiness —the undimmed vision of the Being of God. 
That mother of whom we spoke, if she is herself evil- 
minded, escapes scot-free from the burden of penitence for 
her child. But the holier she is in her own spirit, the 
keener is her sense of the intolerable anguish of un- 
holiness: the holier she is, the more deeply, the more 
personally, is she stricken. The sinner confused with sin, 
which dims and paralyzes every personal power, cannot 
see or feel sin as it is. He cannot fully know what its 
nature is; he cannot really understand the consequences 
which it contains: these things are to him in great part 
words without meaning: and even so far as he does 
understand and is trying to hate, his very hatred for his 


128 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHaP. 


sin is qualified by a liking which is still within himself. 
It is only Another, wholly self-identified with him in all 
that can be meant by natural union, quickened and 
realized in the fire of an infinite love; and yet, without 
impulse of sin, gazing full on the undimmed vision of the 
holiness of God ; whocan be stricken on his behalf with the 
full sense of the infinite horror of sin. 

To know God as He is, to measure with full insight all 
the Beauty of Holiness, to be conscious of its infinite good- 
ness and power; this is, in One self-expressed within a 
nature to which the capacities and disabilities of unholiness 
belong—to One self-brought within the instruments of sin, 
the galling insult of temptation, the conditions of mortal 
consciousness and mortal anguish; this is to realize with a 
personal consciousness which stands wholly unique and 
alone, without a parallel, without a comparison, the whole 
depth that is in sin. To the spirit of such an one sin 
as it is—all its origin and history, its horrible development, 
its inherent hideousness, its appalling consummation, the 
agony of its despair, its alienation from goodness and from 
God, its banishment from light, or beauty, or hope, its 
inherent spiritual death: all these things which sin 
contains, and without the knowledge of which sin is not 
known, are absolutely open and clear —in the light of 
the infinite contrast of the realized glory of God. 

If these things cannot but be known to God the 
Omniscient; yet God, as self-expressed in human con- 
sciousness, God Incarnate in Jesus Christ, deliberately 
took to Himself, in the nature which had sinned, the 
consciousness of these things from the point of view of sin. 
It was then, in Him, no mere vision—however appalling, 
or however true; no mere spectacular insight into truth. 
He had deliberately made Himself one with man, one 
in nature, one in love: one with an absoluteness of 
unity, such as the union of the perfectest mother with her 


Sais sa ie 7 ete = ae 








vi.] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 129 


child does, after all, but dimly and distantly shadow: 
one with man, Himself man, Himself Humanity :—that 
the consciousness of man herein, that consciousness of sin 
which sin made impossible to man, but without which man 
could not consummate his atoning penitence for sin: that 
the full consciousness of sin, in the full light of holiness, 
might be His own personal consciousness; and the 
condemnation of sin—no longer only from without, but 
from within—through the power of self-identity with 
holiness in the act of self-surrender as penitent, might be 
consummated in Himself. 

Is not consummation of penitence, that penitence whose 
consummation sin makes impossible, the real, though 
impossible, atonement for sin? And are not these just 
the things which would consummate penitence,—first, 
a real personal self-identity with the consciousness of sin, 
in its unmeasured fulness, as seen by God; secondly, a 
real personal self-identity with the absolute righteousness 
of God; and thirdly, by inevitable consequence, a 
manifestation of the power of inherent self-identity with 
righteousness in the form of voluntary acceptance of 
all that belongs to the consciousness of sin,—a realiza- 
tion, not of holiness merely, but of penztential holiness? 
For this is penitence; perfect re-establishment of the 
absolute personal identity with righteousness, in the form 
of unreserved embrace of whatever is necessary to 
consummate the perfect condemnation of sin—within the 
self-consciousness and at the cost of the self. 

He, then, on the Cross, offered, as man to God, not 
only the sacrifice of utter obedience, under conditions 
(themselves the consequence of human transgression) 
which made the effort of such perfect will-obedience 
more tremendous than we can conceive; but also the 
sacrifice of supreme penitence, that is, of perfect will- 


identity with God in condemnation of sin, Himself being 
I 


130 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


so self-identified with sinners, that this could take the 
form of the offering of Himself for sin. He voluntarily — 
stood in the place of the utterly contrite—accepting 
insult, shame, anguish, death—death possible only by 
His own assent, yet outwardly inflicted as penal; nay, 
more, in His own inner consciousness, accepting the ideal 
consciousness of the contrite—which is the one form of the 
penitent’s righteousness: desolate, yet still, in whatever 
He was, voluntary; and in that very voluntariness of 
desolation, sovereign. He did, in fact and in full, that 
which would in the sinner constitute perfect atonement, 
but which has for ever become impossible to the sinner, 
just in proportion as it is true that he has sinned. 

The perfect sacrifice of penitence in the sinless Christ 
is the true atoning sacrifice for sin. Only He, who knew 
in Himself the measure of the holiness of God could 
realize also, in the human nature which He had made 
His own, the full depth of the alienation of sin from 
God, the real character of the penal averting of God’s 
face. Only He, who sounded the depth of human con- 
sciousness in regard to sin, could, in the power of His 
own inherent righteousness, condemn and crush sin in the 
flesh. The suffering involved in this is not, in Him, 
punishment, or the terror of punishment; but it is the 
full realizing, in the personal consciousness, of the truth 
of sin, and the disciplinary pain of the conquest of sin ; it is 
that full self-identification of human nature, within range 
of sin’s challenge and sin’s scourge, with holiness as the 
Divine condemnation of sin, which was at once the 
necessity—and the impossibility—of human penitence, ~ 
The nearest—and yet how distant !—an approach to it in 
our experience we recognize not in the wild sin-terrified cry 
of the guilty, but rather in those whose profound self-identifi- 
cation with the guilty overshadows them with a darkness 
and ashame, vital indeed to their being, yet at heart tranquil, 


vi.J THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 131 


because it is not confused with the blurring consciousness 
of a personal sin. That mother whom we imagined—if the 
sin is indeed in her child—she would not, for all the world, 
choose rather to have the sin without the horror of the shame 
of sin. It is the shame, as shame, which is also the hope. 
The anguish itself is the pledge, is the living movement, of 
spiritual life. Her own broken heart—it is the very ex- 
pression of God in her. It is God in her, even if, and even 
whilst, it is also the bowing of her head, in anguish of 
spirit, unto death. In its measure it has caught some echo 
of the awful paradox of that mysterious, that two-sided, 
that incompatible cry—so spiritually desolate, yet so 
tranquil in spirit—‘ My God, My God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me?” } 

If, from our point of view, the point of view of the 
imperfectly penitent, penitence must include meek accept- 
ance of punishment, remember that punishment, so far as 
it ministers to righteousness, is only itself an element 
in penitence. What would have been punishment z// zt 
became penitence, is, in the perfectly contrite, only as 
penitence. It is true that penitence is a condition of 
suffering. The suffering of penitence may quite fairly be 
termed penal suffering. But whatever suffering is involved 
in penitence is part of the true penitent’s freewill offering of 
heartwhole condemnation of sin. To the penitent, in 
proportion as he is perfected, there is no punishment 
outside his penitence. 

And so, in the great mysterious sacrifice of Calvary, 
there is (save indeed in the action, outward merely and 
symbolic, of Roman soldiers or of Jewish priests) no 
question really at all of retribution, inflicted, as by an- 
other, from without. There is no external equating of sin 
with pain. That dying on Calvary—so unthinkable in 
its injustice, if inflicted as retributive penalty—so Divine, 

1 See Note at the end of the Chapter, p. 134. 


132 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap, 


beyond all imagination of beauty or power, as the 
crushing, in flesh, of sin; it is, indeed, from w#thim that 
we must look to see what it meant, and was. It was 
the property, the power, of inherent righteousness, self- 
identified for consummation of penitence, with sinful man. 
There is no element here—either on the one hand, of 
the infliction, or, on the other hand, of the endurance, 
of vengeance. This death of pain, physical and spiritual 
—it is the spontaneous action of inherent righteousness, 
the glory and triumph of inherent righteousness under 
conditions under which righteousness itself could only 
be triumphant as righteousness thus! 

He did not—of course He did not—endure the ven- 
geance of God. We do not deny this only because, in 
every instinct of our being, we feel that it would be— 
as indeed it would—too shocking and too blasphemous 
even for thought; but because we are able positively 
to recognize that, whilst it would, by implication, deny 
both the Divine character of the Eternal Father, 
and the Divine Being of the Incarnate Son, it 
would also, not by implication only but directly, 
contradict the entire conception of the atonement. The 
vengeance of God is not anyhow conceivable as a method 
—on the contrary it is the direct negation—of atonement. 
The vengeance of God is the final consummation of sin 
unrepented, unatoned, unforgiven, unforgiveable. The 
Cross is not the symbol of unforgiveness! No, but 
with undimmed insight into sin, such insight as no spirit 
of man could bear, He offered Himself to consummate 
that reality of penitence by which alone real conscious- 
ness of sin (the universal property of humanity) could 
be righteously transformed and dissolved into—could grow 
into and become and be found to be, after all, more 
essentially, more abidingly—a real identity with the 
absolute righteousness of God. 





vi] THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 133 


He did not—of course He did not—endure the damna- 
tion of sin. But in the bitter humiliation of a self- 
adopted consciousness of what sin—and therefore of 
what the damnation of sin—really is, He bowed His 
head to that which, as far as mortal experience can 
go, is so far, at least, the counterpart on earth of damnation 
that it is the extreme possibility of contradiction and 
destruction of self. He to whom, as the Life of life, all 
dying, all weakness, were an outrage to us inconceivable, 
bowed Himself to Death—Death in its outward form 
inflicted with all the contumely as of penal vengeance— 
Death inwardly accepted as the necessary climax of 
an experience of spiritual desolation, which, but to the 
inherently holy, would have been not only material but 
spiritual death. In mortal agony of body, in strain in- 
conceivable, through the body, on the mind and the will, 
in isolation of spirit (man’s true consciousness towards 
sin)—He died. 

The consummation of penitence carried with it the 
straining, to their breaking, of the vital faculties, the 
dissolution of the mortal instrument. But that dissolution 
was the consummation of penitence ; and the consumma- 
tion of penitence is the consummation of righteousness by 
inherent power finally victorious through and over the 
utmost possibilities of sin. 

Sin, when in its final struggle it had slain by inches 
that through which alone it could ever draw near to 
Kim, in slaying what was mortal of Him had slain 
wholly itself. Where penitence has been consummated 
quite perfectly, that very consciousness, which was heavi- 
ness of spirit for sin, has become the consciousness of 
sin crushed, and dead. Sin slain, sin dead: this is in 
the sacrifice of penitence; this is in the death of the 
Cross. “Behold! the Lamb of God, which taketh away 
the sin of the world!” 


134 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


NOTE TO PAGE 131. 
On the Cry upon the Cross. 


I have received some very friendly censure for making this 
reference to the cry on the Cross, in so far as the reference implies a 
certain interpretation of that cry, which is thought to conflict with its 
deeper significance. 

The suggestion, if I rightly understand it, is that the cry both in its 
own actual words, and still more when interpreted in context either 
with the 22nd psalm as a whole, or with the expostulatory tone which 
is characteristic (in a certain aspect) of the Old Testament prophets 
who prefigured the Messiah, is mainly a pleading to God against 
failure, and the sense of wrong in failure. That is to say that it is the 
cry as of a self-sacrificing righteousness which has of succeeded 
in that which was the very animating purpose of its sacrifice; that it 


is the cry of a protest, such as is familiar in Jeremiah, against. 


unmerited failure,—the sense not of suffering only, but (as it were) 
of the demonstrated uselessness of suffering. In this view it would 
be emblematically represented not simply by the blended penitence, 
and withal tranquillity, of the mother dying of a broken heart; but 
rather by her additional consciousness (if so it were) in dying, that 
even this last surrender of herself had been in vain: for that the child, 
unmoved and un-won, had but fled contumaciously into further evil, 
so that the mother’s very death seemed manifestly to have been for 
nothing. 

It is further suggested that it may perhaps be conceived to be an 
inherent necessity of human consciousness of extreme self-sacrifice, 
before it can reach its own perfectness of consummation, that the 
vision of the mind should be clouded from seeing or feeling its own in- 
alienable victory. It is true, no doubt, that, in the moral sphere at 
least, such sacrifice must, in its own essential nature, be triumphant. 
Yet it is conceivable that it may belong to the very climax of the trial 
in which such righteousness finally consummates its triumph, that the 
sense of victory should be obscured to the consciousness; that the 
sense of failure, and expostulation against failure, the sense of sacrifice 
thrown away, and suffering uselessly borne, may be a necessary 
ingredient in the bitterness of the cup of sacrifice. 

And if it be objected that this, however conceivable as the very 
climax of trial in sinful and ignorant man, is not conceivable in the 
human consciousness which was the very expression of the Person of 
God: it may perhaps be answered that it is conceivable that it was 


ee et gate ian 


= a 





v1.) THE ATONING DEATH OF CHRIST 135 


just for this that He divested Himself of the very qualities which were 
most His own; taking upon Him, by deliberate condescension, that 
very limitedness of imagination and knowledge which would con- 
stitute the supreme bitterness of His suffering in sacrifice: that, in 
a word, He most showed in this the sovereignty of His own character 
as God—by the extent to which He became, as it were, other than 
God, by the limitation even of His own clear insight and conscious- 
ness of self, for the purpose of making the cup of sacrifice full. 

On all this I desire to make no other comment than that I do not feel 
called upon, because of it, to alter what is written in the text. It may 
all be true. I certainly am not disputing it. In some measure at 
least an interpretation which distinguishes infinity from finiteness, and 
insists upon the limitation of mortal faculties, must needs be in the 
direction of truth. But at the most it seems to me only to add a 
further thought to those which I had suggested before. It may make 
them incomplete, but it does not make them untrue; and if they are 
true, it is certainly not incompatible with them. It is obvious more- 
over to add that there are not any words, in the history of the world, 
whose meaning it would be so little reasonable to attempt, or expect, 
to exhaust, by any single strain of interpretation whatever. 


CHAPTER VII 
OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 


AMONG the earliest, and among the most beautiful, of 
the pictures of the Risen Lord in the Gospel history is 
that in which He pleads with the warm-hearted but 
over-confident disciple, who had so misconceived, at the 
crisis, His purpose and character, and who had been— 
all good intentions notwithstanding—so easily beguiled 
into denying Him. 

The question with which the Risen Christ challenges 
St Peter—and many a faint-hearted follower from the 
days of St Peter onwards,—is a question which turns 
wholly upon the reality of personal affection for Himself. 
“ Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?” 

And in truth there is illumination, as well as pathos, 
in the question. There is something in it which goes 
far beyond the touching associations, or the transitory 
accidents, of a merely personal piece of reminiscence. It 
has a world-wide reference. It touches an eternal principle. 
As the question which pierced to the depth of the 
contrite conscience of St Peter; as the question which set 
before him, in a moment, the challenge of the truly Christian 
life; as the test of his restoration to dutifulness and to 
apostleship ; we feel that its words contain, or are capable, 
at the least, of representing, the inner secret of the life of 
the Church. 

But there are times when we wander far enough from 


the simplicity of a relation to the Person and Cross of 
136 


ae at ae 
ee a ey 





CHAP. VII.] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 137 


Christ, which can be simply expressed as the dependence 
of a personal love. And even if the personal love were 
clearer and more devoted than it is, there are times when 
we should be perplexed to determine upon what exactly the 
personal love was based; or in what way the work of Christ 
—even if we dared be certain that we loved Him—made 
essential difference in ourselves. This then is the 
question which we approach in the present chapter. In 
what way does the atoning victory of Christ become an 
effective reality in ourselves? No Christian doubts that 
the Atonement is central, and vital, to the Christian creed. 
In the life, and in the death, of Jesus Christ, is the real 
heart’s hope of every child of man. Yet we are perplexed 
oftentimes by conflicting theories, developed as interpreta- 
tions of the Atonement; so perplexed, in some cases even 
so wronged, nay outraged, by the things that are said to 
us, that we stand some of us in doubt, not only whether 
we can possibly make it intelligible to our consciences, 
but even whether, after all, we ought to tolerate or receive 
it at all. 

One primary difficulty to our thought is the conviction, 
naturally immovable, that, whatever happened on Calvary, 
did not happen to us. With what justice, with what 
reality, we inevitably ask, can we claim its attributes, or 
character, for our own? If in any sense it is true that 
Calvary, with all that Calvary involved,—Calvary, and the 
consummation of the sacrifice of the Crucified,—is the central 
fact in the history of the world: what, after all, putting 
make-believe aside, is the real relation of Calvary to me? 

Whether we go to more ancient, or to more modern, 
forms of current explanation—whether the paying of a 
ransom, or the cancelling of a debt, or the substitution of a 
victim, is our leading metaphor,—there is one thing which 
seems, at first sight, to belong alike to all views which start 
from the great historical event, and find their explanation 


138 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


within that: namely that, characterize it how they may, 
they seem to make atonement a transaction, historical, 
final, consummated long ago:—a transaction (I do not 
ask at this moment between whom; but at all events) far 
anterior to, and wholly outside of, the reality of ourselves. 
And so, partly in protest against every possible form of 
conception of what is felt to be so artificial, as @ transaction, 
dramatically completed, and essentially outside ourselves: 
and partly in obedience to the correlative instinct that the 
only conceivably effective atonement must be somehow, 
where the seat of the necessity lies, within the personality 
that has sinned ; human consciences rise in revolt against 
the entire doctrine of an accomplished atonement. It may 
be that neither of these two instinctive principles is based 
altogether on truth. Yet there is enough of popular truth 
in both of them, to make the protest which is based upon 
them a reality, needing to be taken into rational and 
serious account. And the gosztive meaning of the protest 
is itself truer than the statement of the principles on which 
it is based. It zs true, even if the truth is too often urged 
without balance, that any atonement which is to be 
ultimately effectual for me, must find its ultimate reality 
within what Iam. It zs true that an atonement which is, 
to the absolute end, external only :. which finds no echo, no 
place, as moral characterization, within the individual 
personality ;. can be to him, at last, no more than a 
possibility of atonement which now has failed, and is past. 
It is through consciousness of the truth which is true on 
this side, that we in this generation have become familiar 
with two contrasted sets of theories of atonement,—set 
over against one another under titles whose theological 
history is (to say the least) singularly unfortunate, as 
respectively “objective” and “subjective” theories, | 
These words have been made to be badges of con- 
tradictory views. On the one side it is pleaded that if 


vil] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 139 


the need lies in the sin which is, personally, the sinner’s 
very own, nothing can touch the real point of the need, 
which is not, like the sin, within the sinner. And so, 
when the question is asked as to the real and permanent 
import of Calvary, the emphasis is apt to be laid upon 
the moral effect, the touching example, the eternal appeal 
which the picture of Calvary must for ever make upon 
the thoughts, and hearts, and lives of men. It is a 
marvellous incident—or marvellous suggestion—of history. 
Whether it be exactly incident, or suggestion, is not, it 
is sometimes insinuated, from this point of view, the 
question of most moment. For it is not as a transaction 
that it is either appealed to, or conceived. It is rather 
the idea than the fact: rather the inspiration which 
comes from it than its own achievement: rather the 
outflowing force of moral motive, than the external 
completeness of a consummated work, which constitutes 
both its reality and its power. 

But if we adopt this language, and say that the truth 
of the atonement must be chiefly moral: and that its 
true reality is to be looked for subjectively within the 
conscience, rather than objectively on Calvary and the 
Mount of the Ascension; and if we would so correct, or 
explain away, the point of view of the historic Church; 
(a position to which, in all ages, one vein of mystical 
thought has tended to approximate ;) we are met, on the 
other hand, by arguments, trenchant and confounding, 
which would shew, both from human experience the 
imperative need, and from Scripture the most reiterated 
and solemn assertion, of a redemption wrought effectually, 
once for all, through the Blood of Jesus Christ. There 
are few modern writings on the atonement so widely 
read or so influential as that of Dr Dale. It will be 
remembered how the leading motive of his volume, and 
perhaps it may also be said his chief power, lie in this,— 


140 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


in his accumulated proof that, without tearing the New 
Testament to pieces, you cannot separate from it its 
cardinal belief in the effective reality of a historical and 
objective atonement. It will be remembered also that 
the same faith, often in its most crudely objective form. 
itself constitutes the living religious force of a vast pro- 
portion of the conviction and practice that are, at least 
amongst Protestant communities, most vitally and 
effectively Christian. 

But in truth the very antithesis itself is, on examination, 
artificial and unreal. For here, as elsewhere, the words 
subjective and objective are only relatively, not really, 
opposed. So far is either of them from really denying, 
that each in fact implies and presupposes the other; nor 
can either of the two, in complete isolation from the other, 
be itself ultimately real. 

The word objective is used, by those who make a 
point of using it, to mark their insistence that the sacrifice 
of Christ was in itself real and adequate, “a full perfect 
and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the 
sins of the whole world;” and that it is so, whether 
I, or another, apprehend it as such or no. Of course it 
is so. What they so far contend for is altogether 
necessary and true. It is not upon the power of 
_ apprehension in one man, or in another, that the right- 
eousness of God in Christ depends for being righteous, 
or for crushing sin. It was anyhow Divine righteousness, 
which, in and as man, broke down the power of sin. 

But if it is to be—as in purpose and in capacity it 
assuredly is—my righteousness, crushing sin for and in me ; 
it is clear that it is not so, irrespectively of all that I can 
still either do, or be. It is of necessity that I should be 
in a certain relation with it: and upon my relation to it 
its relation to me will ultimately depend. In some form 
every one recognizes that this is true, In itself, and to 


vit] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 141 


others whose life it has become, it is what it is, irrespec- 
tively of me. But to me, if I have mo relation to it, it is 
as though it were not. An objective fact that is not 
apprehended in any sense subjectively, is to those who 
have no subjective relation to it, as if it were non-existent 
A fact objectively existing, in itself, without relation to 
any apprehending mind, is an impossibility to thought. 
Light may have indeed other qualities or effects; but it 
is not ight save to a capacity of seeing. What is the light 
of noonday to a man born blind? To others, who know 
what sight is, it is real: but as far as he is concerned it 
does not, as light, exist. It is identical with its con- 
tradictory. To say that white, as white, is precisely 
identical with black, is to deny its existence as white > 
altogether. The sunlight, apprehended by no creature, 
would yet be real to the apprehension and will of the 
Creative mind; but outside the apprehension of God 
or man, outside all relation to mind, it could have neither 
meaning nor reality at all. It is in its aspect as spiritually 
realized that it is, in fact, real. Thus those who plead 
for an objective atonement are right ;—but would not be 
right, if its objective reality could be irrespective of 
realization subjectively. 

What those, then, really demand on the other hand 
who plead for an atonement which would not be atone- 
ment after all, if its ultimate meaning were not a moral 
or subjective reality, is itself no less vitally necessary 
and true. But perhaps the word “subjective” is not 
used in this context so much as a term selected for defence 
by those who defend it: but rather as a term imputed 
for reproach by those who repudiate it. And as such the 
term is mixed up with associations which obscure and 
belie its meaning. Men use the word to stigmatise what 
is unreal as unreal. Men speak of the appearance of 
a nightmare or a ghost as subjective, meaning that it is 


142 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


the mere creature of illusory imagination, which mistakes 
non-existence for reality. Now so long as the word is 
in familiar use to denote the hallucinations of a brain 
diseased, misconceiving untruth as truth: so long will 
it serve in theological discussion, whether upon the 
Atonement or the Eucharist, largely to caricature thought 
which it is incapable of representing truly. We need 
to get rid of the unworthy and false associations of the 
word. Subjective does not mean imaginary, or un- 
authorized. It does not suggest something unrelated 
to eternal truth; real only to the individual—in pro- 
portion as he, with no reason beyond himself, imagines 
it to be real. Subjective truth rather is that which is 
true in and to the apprehending capacity of the individual, 
because the individual has learnt aright to apprehend 
and see a truth, whose reality is not dependent on 
himself, What is real in and to my mind is therefore 
subjective to me. It is subjectively that the objective 
is realized. For its reality to me, for its reality to any- 
one, the objective waits for, and depends on, its correlative 
subjective. What is not subjectively real to any mind 
at all cannot be real objectively—just as light could not 
be light if no faculties of seeing existed: nor could 
matter be xéopos save to mind. The two, then, are really 
inseparable, as convex and concave. Objective, that is 
wholly without subjective realization, is the same as 
non-existent. Subjective, that is not objective also, is 
hallucination. 

So with the Cross and its atoning sacrifice. The sub- 
jective or moral theory that finds all its meaning within 
us men and our individual consciences, and makes but 
~ little of the act external, objective, historical, consummated 
adequately and once for all :—this, in trying to realize for 
itself the meaning of atonement, is really cutting off (as it 
were) the blossom which should become fruit, from the root 


vit.] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 143 


by which it lives. On the other hand the simply objective 
theory which forgets the place of the Cross within Christian 
life, which says, “Go your way: be content: the atonement 
was once a transaction, with such and such meaning 
between God and Christ: but you have nothing in it, 
except to believe that it is a fact, finished and done:”— 
this goes far to deprive the root of that fruit-bearing 
capacity which is its own inherent and proper meaning. 

The ultimate realization is indeed to be within us— 
the very transfiguration of ourselves. The sacrifice of 
Christ, as merely external to us, does indeed include all 
possibility, but as yet it only is as possibility; it is 
potential, it is preliminary,—and it is provisional. The 
sacrifice is to be, in its final consummation, the real 
transformation of us all. But it is to be so in us because 
it was first the historical sacrifice, consecrated on Calvary, 
unique, all-sufficing; real between God and man in the 
Person of Jesus Christ—and to each of us, as individuals, 
seen and believed in external objective history. It is, 
so far as each one of us is concerned, objective first, 
that it may become subjective. It was real to God- 
ward in Christ, that it might become the reality, in 
Christ, of men. It is real in others that it may be real 
in us. It is first a historical, that it may come to be a 
personal, fact. Calvary, and the Ascension, precede any 
thought or apprehension of ours. But Calvary, and the 
Ascension, are none the less to become an integral part 
of the experience and reality of our personal conscious- 
ness. If Calvary and the Ascension were anything less 
than the most real of historical realities, there would be 
in fact no possibility of their translation into our personal 
characters. But if even Calvary and the Ascension were 
past history merely, they would not after all have saved, 
or have touched, us. 

An atonement, then, moral or spiritual, ought never to 


144 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


have been suggested as an alternative to the historical 
sacrifice of the Creed, or as a correction of it; for it is 
itself an element necessary and integral, in the meaning 
of the historical sacrifice. Nor ought any question to have 
been raised between an objective and a subjective atone- 
ment: nor ought either to have been maintained in the 
way of antagonism against the other. The real question 
should have been not whether the Christian atonement 
is a fact, wrought without us, 0x a moral and spiritual 
alteration within: but rather, seeing that it must be both, 
and that either of these two is to mean the other, we should 
ask, How does it happen, by what power and by what 
means, that what is primarily an external fact consum- 
mated in history, can and does become the essential. 
reality in the characterization of the personalities of men? 
How can the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, consecrated on 
Calvary for eternal presentation, become in me—not a 
personal reality only, but the main constitutive reality 
of my own individual personal being? 

If we have been content to be long in working back 
to this question, it is the result of a belief that upon this 
question—upon its answer no doubt in the fullest sense, but 
even upon the framing of the question aright,—depends in 
large measure the insight of our generation into that supreme 
reality of the atonement, which just because it is deeper 
at once and simpler and wider than human experience, 
has been seen by different generations of Christians so 
differently, and yet has been vital, and has been true, to 
them all. 

This then is the form of our question—how can, in 
this matter, the objective de the subjective? The deed 
enacted, once for all, without, Je the quality of the con- 
sciousness, within, of ten thousand times ten thousand 
of the children of men? The question is not whether 
it is so, but How? 





vit.J OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 145 


Now, no attempt will be made to reach the full 
answer to this question in the present chapter. For the 
present we must be content with an answer which is 
preparatory rather than adequate: suggestive, perhaps, 
of more than it attempts to explore: and possibly even, 
as it stands, superficially at least and verbally, (though 
not really, to those who discern what lies beneath simple 
experiences,) capable of being made use of to confuse, as 
well as to establish, the faith of the Church. 

Speaking practically then, rather than abstractly, we 
may say that the first preliminary to the real translation of 
all that is signified by Calvary into a constitutive fact 
of my own inner being is that, looking externally upon it 
as a fact of history, I should apprehend it, believe it, con- 
template it, and Jove it. 

It is worth while to observe that I cannot begin, unless, 
to me at least, the history is truth, Even upon the 
extreme hypothesis that the sort of unqualified moral 
allegiance, of which we are speaking now, would be 
possible towards what was, in fact, a beautiful allegory: 
it would certainly not be possible save to one who mistook 
the allegory for fact. I do not analyze now the paradox 
of the position which could suggest that the highest 
education of human character ever dreamed of might be 
based upon a lie, or a phantasy; but I note that the thought 
of possible untruth must be absolutely shut out from the 
consciousness which is to be really educated by it. From 
the beginning, the reality of Calvary as objective history is 
a postulate, without which nothing really can follow at all. 

The first point, then, is to apprehend and believe it as 
true. This is faith in the lower and barer sense of the 
word :—to recognize that the fact indeed is so; and to 
have soine insight into the meaning of the fact. All our 
teaching, as teaching, historical or doctrinal, goes to make 


this foundation sure. 
K 


146 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


But secondly, it is something far beyond this primary 
apprehension or belief, when we say that our moral 
advancement further depends upon our contemplation of 
what we believe. Those do not grow into the likeness of 
the Cross who merely believe in their hearts, however 
sincerely, that the Cross was, in fact, once borne for 
them by their Lord. We speak now of a concentration 
of faculties by intellectual and moral effort. We speak 
of study, careful and minute,—a tracing of meanings and 
purposes, of connections and corollaries——an insight into 
the relations and significance of details,—a vivid recalling, 
as into present life, through the powers of imagination 
taught carefully and disciplined, of all the wonder of 
those unique scenes, and all the mystery of that central 
Personality, in whose uniqueness only they have their 
meaning, or were, or are, what they are! In a word we 
speak of that sort of framework of intimacy of knowledge, 
which is the direct correlative of love. 

Our third point, then, is love. The most diligent study 
would be nugatory: nay the most genuine intimacy would 
tend rather to severance and contrast than moral union: 
unless the intimacy were but an aspect of love. “ Lovest 
thou Me?” Real, personal love, uplifted and uplifting, 
love for the Crucified because of the Cross, love even for 
the Cross because of the Crucified: this is perhaps the most 
obvious, and the most indispensable, of practical conditions 
for the real translation of the scene without into the 
material of the character within. I do not stay to analyze 
the possibility in us, of such love. We know of what sort 
it is as a practical duty, and we know something of its 
transforming power, long before we can realize whence, or 
how, it is possible. But this phrase “to love,” after all, is 
a phrase which has been used for so many purposes, that it 
is shorn, for us, of a large part of its proper power. Quite 
apart from positively degraded uses, we use it for the 








vit.] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 147 


feeblest kinds of affection, not touching the real truth of 
love. Partly it is for this reason that we have reserved 
another special form of phrase for cases in which we can 
recognize the real informing and constraining force of love. 
If you say of a man not only that he loves, but that he 
ts in love with, either a person or a cause, you intend to 
emphasize, by that phrase, a distinction between on the 
one hand an emotion quiescent if not passive,—one of the 
many shifting judgments of approval to which in turn 
man’s mind and feeling give assent; and on the other 
hand a passion, dominant and sweeping, which carries all 
else before it with torrent force, filling all the mind and 
shaping all the actions, giving new zest, new power, 
possibly even new capacity and new character to the 
whole life of the spirit which has felt at last what is to 
be “in love.” 

“Lovest thou Me?” It is difficult for our imagination 
to emphasize too strongly what the meaning would be of 
“being in love with” Christ, crucified and risen; or to 
how much it would be the practical key in the way of the 
translation of the spirit of Calvary into the animating spirit 
of individual Christian life. What engrossing of faculties, 
what absorption of desire, what depth of thought, what 
wistfulness of kindness, what strength of will, what 
inspiration of power,—to endeavour or to endure,—would 
forthwith follow, with spontaneous, silent, irresistible 
sequence, if once we were “in love”! 

So all-inclusive indeed is the meaning of love, that it is 
needless to distinguish from love, as though it were a 
separable point, the effort of personal imitation and 
approach. Consciously or unconsciously, love is imitative. 
What I am really in love with I must in part be 
endeavouring to grow like: and shall be growing like, 
if the love is really on fire, even more than I consciously 


endeavour. What I am really in love with characterizes 


148 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY — [cuHap. 


me. it is that which I, so far, am becoming. J» love 
then, at least, though perhaps not separably from love, 
there is much imitation, conscious and unconscious, of 
the Spirit which revealed itself to the world on Calvary. 
There may be no inherent beauty in asceticism. There 
may be no form of asceticism which is not, sometimes, 
the product of mean and selfish impulses; which does 
not, sometimes, draw justly upon itself the condemnation, 
and even contempt, of healthy consciences, But alas! 
for us if we cannot also, in this context, see how 
directly the ascetic spirit may be the irresistible out- 
come of pure love. The daily unselfishness—more and 
more smiling and spontaneous—the quiet stringency 
and gladness of detailed self-discipline; do we not see 
how this, as the unconscious, or the conscious, imitation 
of the Cross, by one who is in love with the Crucified, 
may be just the natural homage, the relief which wz/ not 
be denied, of a devoted love, welling up and bubbling 
over in act? Be it what it may as cold self-conscious 
rule, at least as the expression and relief of over-flowing 
love, asceticism, even the exactest, is not only blameless 
but beautiful. It is also, in very large measure, a 
practical token of the thing we are looking for: a secret 
of the process of the real translation of Calvary, con- 
templated and loved, into the inmost characterizing reality 
of the spirit of the loving worshipper. 

But in dwelling so long on contemplation and love 
as if within these lay the secret of the answer to the 
question asked just now, we lay ourselves open, no doubt, 
to more questions than one. Thus it may be asked 
whether, on this interpretation, the only real value of 
Calvary and the Ascension, as historically objective realities, 
is to supply a basis for my emotions to work upon? 
They constitute, no doubt, a marvellous revelation; an 
over-mastering appeal; a perfect example; a supreme 





VII.) OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 149 


object and motive for love. Is this all? Is this, and 
this only, their part in my redemption? And, if so, are 
they really indispensable at all? Would not the appeal 
and motive be the same, if I really believed in them as 
appeal and motive, even if they never actually happened ? 
It might be strange, perhaps, that the deepest of all 
effects should follow upon a mistaken estimate of fact. 
But, strange or not strange, would not the same effects 
after all really follow in fact from an erroneous belief in 
Calvary and the Ascension, as from a true one, if only 
the erroneous belief were sufficiently protected from every 
suspicion of doubt? And if so again, then is not the 
whole thing a reappearance, in very thin disguise, of what 
we always understood by a subjective theory of the atone- 
ment,—rather than, what it seemed to promise to be, 
any real reconciliation or synthesis of subjective with 
objective ? 

There is one form of question—with branching con- 
sequences. And here is another. If contemplation, 
imitation, love, are adequate as the keynotes of ex- 
planation, it may well be asked—is such a contempla- 
tion or such a love as is required, itself within the 
possibilities of the human character? Are my conditions 
such, that this process of emotional transformation, can 
be by me maintained, or even begun? And the answer 
must certainly be that, consistently with the conditions of 
human experience, on the basis of human initiative or 
human accomplishment,—zwo, it is not a possibility! To 
offer to me, being what I know myself to be, the sacrifice 
of Christ as an incitement, or an example, is not useless 
only—but worse than useless. It is, you urge, the most 
beautiful of ideals. But—the loftier the ideal, the more 
absolutely is it, to me, unapproachable. It is, you urge, 
the most moving, the most constraining, object of affec- 
tion. I can see that it is so—or that it ought to be. 


150 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


But even while I assent with part of my mind, there is 
that in me by which I feel and know that J cannot 
altogether be in love with an object of love so inaccessible 
to me,—just because it is more supremely lovable than 
I can conceive or desire. No; on its side—even J can see 
that everything is indeed complete: but—on my side—it 
is the “I” which is incapable. To appeal to me for 
what is impossible to me, is only to convict and to crush. 
I need something first which will not merely make appeal 
to, or draw out, the best that is in me; but which will 
change and transform the very meaning and possibility 
of that fatal word “I.” 

The word “I” is the point at which all such theory 
breaks down. Surely discussions of atonement,—of' its 
relation to me or mine to it—have often been in vain, 
because they have tried to explain it apart from any 
examination of the meaning of the fatal word “I,”—as 
though the word “I” were a word of obvious meaning, 
and as though from first to last, throughout the process 
the word retained its one obvious meaning unchanged. 
Its meaning is far from remaining either simple, or un- 
qualified. On the contrary, the whole clue to my 
apprehension of Atonement lies, it may be, in the chang- 
ing content and significance of that one keyword “I.” 

This is the answer to the second question. And from 
the second we go back to the first. And here again 
we have to answer No! It is not all, nor anything 
approaching to all, the part borne in my redemption by 
Calvary and the Ascension that they should offer to me 
a model, or a motive, or an object of love. But what 
is far more, and is an integral part in any understanding 
or explanation of the Atonement,—the life of Christ, 
consecrated upon the Cross, consummated in the Ascension, 
itself constitutes the very basis of the possibility, nay 
more, of the vital and present and experienced reality 





vil.) OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 151 


of that change in the meaning of the “I” and its capacities, 
without which any motive or model or ideal object for 
affection, would serve only to condemn and destroy. 

We, then, have not reached—we have hardly as yet 
i even touched upon—the heart of the matter. The heart — — _ 
of the matter would lie in the exposition, and realization, 
of Pentecost. The atonement as a transaction without 
ourselves—expound it how you will—is not yet consum- 
mated for us.-In terms simply of a transaction without 
ourselves, the mystery of the atonement cannot be ex- 
pounded. This is why so many expositions of the atone- 
ment are, to us, justly inconclusive, or worse. They 
have tried to explain the method, or justice, of its relation 
to us. And they stop short at a point at which its rela- 
tion to us is not yet properly real. What Jesus in 
Himself suffered, or did, on Calvary, you may perhaps 
explain in terms of Calvary. The meaning of His 
Ascension into Heaven, you may in some part at least 
explain without looking onwards to its further effects. 
But/the relation of what He did to us, its working, its 
reality for and in us, you can only explain at all in terms of 
Pentecost. An exposition of atonement which leaves out 
Pentecost, leaves the atonement unintelligible—in relation 
to us. For what is the real consummation of the atone- 
ment to be? It is to be—the very Spirit of the Crucified 
become our spirit—ourselves translated into the Spirit 
of the Crucified. The Spirit of the Crucified, the Spirit 
of Him who died and is alive, may be, and please God, : 
shall be, the very constituting reality of ourselves” fal ¢ 
as always when we come to the deeper truths. of Christian 
exposition, all is found to turn, not on explaining away, 
but on making vital and real, that membership, unity, 
identification with Christ, which is so familiar a feature 
of Scriptural language. He who could say with the most 
unaffected sincerity, “I determined not to know anything 





152 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,”! said 
also “far be it from me to glory save in the cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been 
crucified unto me, and I unto the world,”? and “I have 
been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer 
I but Christ liveth in me.”® I am appealing only to our 
own language, familiar indeed as language at every turn, 
which yet we find it too often almost impossible to assimi- 
late or to conceive. “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, 
so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to 
drink His Blood, that our sinful bodies may be made 
clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His 
most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in 
Him, and He in us.” 

Now we have made no attempt at all hitherto to enter 
upon the exposition of Pentecost, the crucial doctrine— 
professed so often, and so often without a meaning !— 
of the Holy Spirit, as constituting the Church. But at 
least the things which we have tried to say may serve 
to illustrate the cardinal principle, that Calvary is the 
condition, precedent and enabling, to Pentecost. The 
objective reality is completed first, that it may be indeed 
subjectively realized. Christ is crucified first and risen 
before our eyes ; that Christ crucified and risen may be the 
secret love and power of our hearts. Calvary without 
Pentecost, would not be an atonement Zo us. But 
Pentecost could not be without Calvary. Calvary is the 
possibility of Pentecost: and Pentecost is the realization, 
in human spirits, of Calvary. 

“The Spirit of the crucified Christ could not become our 
spirit, nor we live on, and by, Him, till Christ was 
crucified, and ascended, and enthroned. The Spirit 
of human penitence could not be ours, till penitence 
had been realized in humanity. The Spirit of human 


1 x Cor. ii, 2. 2 Gal. vi. 14. 3 Gal. ii. 20. 





vil. ] OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 153 


righteousness could not be ours, till humanity, in the 
consummation of penitence, had become perfectly one with 


the righteousness of God. 


Human penitence, human atonement, human righteous- 
ness,—all are first before our eyes, as external objects, that 
they may be the secret of our hearts, that they may be the 
very truth of ourselves. But the transforming power, the 
power of real reflection and effective allegiance, is not to be 
found in ourselves. Or, at least, the question has to be 
seriously raised— What do we mean by ourselves? “What 
is the true account of human personality? And the 
answer to this question can only be given in the light, 
if not in the language, of Pentecostal doctrine, the doctrine 
of the Holy Ghost. It is Pentecost, it is the gift pro- 
gressively transforming, it is the indwelling of the Spirit of 
Holiness, the Spirit of the Crucified, which is the trans- 
figuring of human personality: a transfiguring in which at 
last, for the first time, self has become fully self, and 
the meaning of human personality is consummated and 


realized. Ly 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RELATION TO THE BEING OF GOD 


WE need then some study of the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, in order that we may understand the meaning of 
human personality. But before we apply this doctrine to 
the elucidation of human personality, it is necessary first to 
make some attempt to measure what we mean by the 
doctrine itself What are we eally able to understand 
about the Holy Spirit, in reference, first, to the Personal 
Being of God? 

The first condition for understanding (in any sense of 
the word) the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, is to 
begin by giving the utmost possible emphasis to the truth, 
which is as essential to the theologian as to the philosopher, 
—of the unity of God. God cannot be multiplied. “God” 
is a word which defies the possibility of a plural. To dally 
for a moment with any doubt or qualification of the 
absoluteness of the truth of the unity of God, is to empty 
the word itself of its essential significance. “The Lord 
our God, the Lord is One?’ is a principle which necessarily, 
underlies every thought and every phrase of the Atha- 
nasian creed. If the Son is God, He is absolutely, and 
identically God—szngularis, unicus, et totus Deus. And the 
same is true also of the Holy Ghost. The Three Persons 
are neither Three Gods, nor Three parts of God. Rather 
they are God Threefoldly, God Tri-personally. Of course 
no human phrases are positively adequate. But nega- 


1 See above, page 84. 
154 





CHAP, VIII] THE HOLY SPIRIT . 155 


tively at least we must get rid, so far as we may, of 
positive misconceptions. It is God, not “a” God, nor 
a “part of” God,—it is God who eternally is, who thinks 
who wills, who designs, who creates, who ordains: it is God 
who eternally is, who loves, who condescends, who 
“deviseth means,” who takes hold of man, who reveals, 
who redeems: it is God who eternally is, who attracts, who 
informs, who inspires, who animates,—it is God who, 
in Himself, and God who, even in His creatures, physical 
or spiritual, makes from all sides Divine response to 
Himself. The personal distinction in Godhead is a distinc- 
tion within, and of, unity: not a distinction which qualifies 
unity, or usurps the place of it, or destroys it. 

Historically, the unity of the Godhead, was impressed 
on the consciousness of Israel, as the religious representa- 
tive of man, for some two thousand years, before the stage 
in religious evolution was reached, at which any further 
revelation was possible of what was meant or contained 
within the unity. And as the further conception of God 
Incarnate,—God revealed within, and as, the moral and 
spiritual perfectness of man,—dawned by degrees, slowly, 
imperiously, compellingly, upon the consciousness of men 
of special moral and spiritual capacity of insight; it was 
most assuredly not as the revelation of another God, or of 
another than God, but as the express image and actual 
revelation of God Himself, the One, the All-in-all, the 
Eternal, that the disciples learned to believe in, and to 
worship, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

And certainly in what He said Himself about the 
“other Paraclete,” the “Spirit of Truth,” Jesus Christ is 
not for a moment unteaching the fundamental verity that 
God is One. The teaching when it comes takes hardly 
the form of a new revelation at all. It is not ushered 
in with the dignity or the surprise of a new and amazing 
declaration as to the essential Being of Deity. Rather 


156 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


it comes in a quiet, practical way, as explaining the 
meaning of His own bodily absence; and how that 
absence could be, after all, a nearer and truer presence 
of Himself, and therefore of God, than could possibly 
be represented or expressed by bodily nearness in a 
material order of things. It zs of course, in its own truth, 
a new revelation. It is the beginning of a new epoch— 
mysterious indeed, from the standpoint of everything that 
had been either attained or conceived before—in the 
revelation of the meaning of life, and specially the relation 
of created Life to God. It is the opening of new vistas 
of conception, such as we can only realize in part, about 
the essential Being of God Himself. 

But such a revelation, however in fact august or far- 
reaching, is in form made almost incidentally, as a 
necessary sequel, an element implied, and necessary to 
be discerned, for a full grasp of the conception of what 
Incarnation itself properly meant. The one thing which 
it emphatically is mot, is any correction or unsaying of 
the age-long truth of the essential unity of God. 

It is the more necessary to begin by insisting on this 
fundamental principle, because, though there are few who 
would have the temerity to deny it in words, it has not 
really an adequate place in general or popular Christian 
thought. It can hardly be doubted that, among those 
who wish to make a point of being orthodox, there is 
a great deal of practical Di- or Tri- theism. The word 
Person, as applied to the distinctions within the Divine 
unity,—though it is by far the best word, and, for us, 
the only word possible: and though, contrary to what 
is sometimes supposed, we may venture to think that it 
represents (or rather that it is capable of) a considerable 
advance even upon the suggestive Greek word “Yrocracis: 
has nevertheless its drawbacks, We are profoundly 
accustomed to human persons, and perhaps to take for 


virt.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 157 


granted, moreover, a somewhat shallow philosophical 
conception as to where the essence of human personality 
lies. We are accustomed too much to conceive of 
personality primarily as distinctness. A and B and C 
are separate personalities: that is to say A is not B, 
and B is not C. When we are asked what we mean 
by “ personalities,” we are too apt to reply by underlining 
the word “separate.” The fact that A is distinct, as 
a separate centre of being; the fact that A zs mot any 
other than A; this lies very near the heart of what we 
popularly conceive personality to mean. 

Now I believe that this is not the ultimate truth even 
of human personality: but it is not human personality 
that I am discussing now. It is in any case certainly 
not a key to the truth or meaning of the Threefoldness 
of Personality in God. And so long as we carry it with 
us into Theology from our (supposed) human experience, 
we are carrying with us an idea which is sure to work 
some confusion, Supposing for a moment that this “zs 
not” lies at the heart of the distinction of one human 
person from another; in any case “zs mot” is not the 
heart of the distinction of the Three Persons of Deity. 
I am borrowing a phrase which has become happily 
familiar to very many, if I say that whereas “mutual 
exclusiveness” may seem indispensable for the under- 
standing of the distinction of human persons: for the 
understanding of the distinction of Divine Persons it 
is no less indispensable that we should grasp,—or at 
least should see that it would be necessary to grasp,— 
the opposite conception of “mutual inclusiveness.” “I 
am not you”—“I, in respect of being I, am quite in- 
dependent of you”—these are statements, which even 
if they be not ultimate truth, at all events run very far 
back, on earth. But, in God, no Person is, or can be, 
at all without the other. The Father is inseparable from 


158 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


the Son, and the Son from the Father: and the Spirit, 
inseparable from either, is the bond of the Union of 
Both. 

The word Person is the true word in itself. But the 
word Person, seen in the light of certain human assump- 
tions, leads human minds, if not to what is really a 
practical Tritheism, at all events to an undue and 
dangerous separation between the Persons, and the opera- 
tions—I had almost said the characters—of the Eternal 
Father, and the Eternal Word, and the Eternal Spirit, 
which are One God. Historically perhaps this separation 
has assumed its most terrible proportions in some 
monstrous theories of the atonement, according to which, 
at least in their popular form, the Persons of Deity have 
been not only distinguished, but separated,—not only 
separated but very sharply contrasted ;—and that, not in 
operation only but in moral attributes,—in the will of 
Goodness and Love. But even among those who would 
utterly repudiate such awful travesties of theological truth 
as these, are there not many who practically regard the 
Divine Persons as if they were separate—in being and in 
operation ; shrinking with a sort of orthodox horror from 
seeming to introduce any One into the sphere which belongs 
—not to Him, but to Another Person? The Father is 
regarded as apart from the Son: and the Son as apart 
from the Father; and the Spirit as to be clearly sundered 
from Both. And then each must have a separate sphere of 
operation assigned to Him ; and His sphere must be kept 
apart from the spheres of the Others; and scruples and 
perplexities begin to arise as to the relation of the sphere 
or work respectively—say of the ascended Son to that of 
the Spirit; as if God were divided, and in parts. And 
perhaps the question presents itself to scrupulous minds, 


whether really they do,—or can,—believe the Holy Spirit 


to be Personal, without zso facto making’ Him distinct 


VIII. THE HOLY SPIRIT 159 


from God,—the God who “is Spirit,” and whose Spirit He 
is! 

Again, as a result that partly follows from undue 
separation, there are those who practically omit from their 
lives the third part of the Creed altogether. They believe 
in God: and in the life and death of Jesus Christ. But 
though of course they repeat the Creed as a whole, belief in 
the Spirit finds no place in their lives: they have really no 
adequately intelligent conception to attach to the words. 
Or if, without such adequate conception, they nevertheless 
make much of the use of the words, then the words them- 
selves, becoming unduly familiarized, are, through familiarity, 
debased: they speak lightly of the Spirit, or the gifts of 
the Spirit, not knowing at what a cost they misuse the 
name, and lower in themselves the power of the thought, 
of the presence of the Eternal God. 

But if perils like these are easily incurred through the 
common associations of the human word person: it may 
be asked, perhaps, whether, when these are removed, the 
word Person really carries, for us, any positive illumination 
of thought about the Being of God? Above all it may be 
asked, whether the word Person itself, however inevitable 
in Latin or English, does not represent a retrogression of 
thought, in comparison with the Greek of the early 
Councils? Tpeis irocrdces, Mia ovcia, or even Tpeis iroordceis, 
Mia irdoracis—there is something in the very bravery of the 
paradox which is fascinating. ‘Three Subsistences, of One 
Substance: Three Existences of One Essence: or even 
Three Subsistences of One Subsistence; Three Existences 
of One Existence; this seems at first sight to be nearer in 
expression to that mystery for which we strive to find an 
utterance; and not even to suggest the perilous complete- 
ness of separation which begins to creep in at once with 
the phrase—“ Tres Personze Unius Substantie.” Yet 
however valuable these expressions may be #0 us, as 


160 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


correcting our misapprehensions of the word Person; they 
are really inadequate substitutes for that word. This is 
none the less true to modern thought, even if it be supposed 
that historically, in the first instance, as new words, the 
words IIpéowra or Persone may have carried with them 
some intellectual loss. There is something essentially 
lacking in the word“Yrdoracvs. And just for this very reason ; 
that, with all its subtle suggestiveness, it is still, so largely, 
an impersonal word, It is abstract rather than actual, a 
conception rather than a living whole. When St Augustine 
says, in often quoted words “Tamen cum queritur 
Quid tres? magna prorsus inopia humanum _laborat 
eloguium. Dictum est tamen Tres Persone non ut illud 
diceretur, sed ne taceretur;”4 unspeakably valuable 
though the caution is, and has always been felt to be, yet 
he really has said too much. There was after all some- 
thing positive which was needed; and something which, 
with whatever lack of full completeness, only the word 
“Person” really supplied; or had, at least, the capacity of 
supplying. The word Person has a fulness and totality of 
meaning of its own, and certainly nothing short of the in- 
clusive completeness of personal being can be predicated, at 
any moment, of God—whether Father, Son, or Holy Ghost. 
If, negatively, we can be rid of the associations privative 
and exclusive which are supposed to be inherent in the 
word: we shall recognize, on the positive side, that the 
word expresses a truth which we must assert, and can 
assert with intelligence. 

Our intelligence is, on the one side, positive and real, 
and on the other side, explicitly limited. And both 
consequences follow from the nature of our own knowledge 
of personality. It is urged that it is hard for us to under- 
stand a Trinity of Personality. Naturally it is so. The 


1 De Trinitate, V., cap. ix. 10, p. 838; cp. also VII. iv. 9, p. 860; VIII. i. 
p. 865, etc. 





VIII. } THE HOLY SPIRIT 161 


basis of our understanding of personality is experience. 
We can understand no personality at all, divine or human, 
in Trinity or in Unity, except so far as we have first 
realized something, in personal experience, of what it 
means. If we were not persons, with an experience 
of personality antecedent to either reflection in thought or 
expression in words, we could not either explain the 
meaning of the word, or receive explanation from others, 
Persons, analyzing their own consciousness of personality, 
to others who begin by sharing (as matter of experience) 
in the same consciousness, can give some account, 
intelligible to both, of the meaning of the experience 
which is anyhow common to both, before it is analyzed or 
understood at all. But as it is only upon the basis of 
this experience that any understanding is possible at 
all: so is it impossible that any understanding should 
really travel outside of what is contained, implicitly at 
least if not explicitly, within the experience. 

Now in a sense we are travelling beyond our 
experience whenever we assert an Absolute or Supreme 
Personality at all,—whenever, therefore, we assert the 
Personality of God. We are passing outside our explicit 
experience ; we are asserting something which transcends 
what we have realized. But we are not passing outside 
what is necessarily implied within our own experience. 
Our own consciousness of personality, when cross- 
examined, bears witness, as on the one hand to its 
own inherent character and demand: so, on the other, to 
its own universal and necessary incompleteness. That 
which our experience universally requires, for any possible 
account of itself, is nowhere, in our experience, realized, 
Our personality, though real as far as it goes, is a partial, 
tentative, and incomplete personality: and as such only 
explicable at all upon the hypothesis of a meaning of 


the word Personality, without which indeed even our 
L 


162° ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


present experience would have neither sense nor signifi- 
cance, but which could only find its realization in 
God. 

Up to this point we may fairly be said to “under- 
stand” Divine Personality. We can understand the 
idea of the completeness of those attributes of which we 
are conscious of the possession, and conscious of the 
incompleteness. And we can understand the proposition 
that that idea of their completeness is an absolute 
intellectual necessity to give rational meaning to our 
incomplete experience. A will partially free is only 
intelligible at all upon the assumption that, ideally 
at least, there is such a thing as freedom of will that 
is no longer partial. A character more or less advanced 
in loving is a phrase positively chaotic except in the light 
of an ideal conception of perfect love. 

But if so much of the idea of Divine Personality is 
implicitly contained in our own personal consciousness: is 
there anything in the Christian revelation of Divine 
Personality, and particularly Divine Threefoldness in 
Personality, which is not so implicitly contained? Cer- 
tainly I have no wish to answer such a question, at this 
point, in any dogmatic manner. I do not assume that we 
know all that is implicitly contained within ourselves. 
More may well be implied in our consciousness than 
as yet the greatest among us have explored. On the 
other hand I do not assume that any human analysis 
however perfect must ultimately of necessity cover all the 
ground. To put it in the most guarded and moderate 
way, I see no reason for assuming that what is implicit in 
human personality must exhaust the meaning of personality 
in God. And my point at the present moment is that if, 
or just so far as, there is in the revelation of the Triune 
Personality of God any element whatever which is not. on 
analysis, within the necessary implications of human 





Se Oe 


VIII. J THE HOLY SPIRIT 163 


personality ; just so far it necessarily follows, from the 
very terms on which alone we can understand any 
personality, human or divine, at all, that those elements 
cannot be, in any proper sense of the words, intellectually 
intelligible to us. There is a certain note of reverent 
agnosticism which it is well to strike with some emphasis 
here. It is wonderful indeed to what an extent the 
finite can express and reflect the infinite. But it is 
not natural, after all, to suppose that the infinite will 
be adequately measured by the finite. I would speak with 
reserve, seeing how much of capacity of the infinite 
is in the nature which has become, once for all, the 
expression of God. Yet I may safely protest against the 
assumption, made too lightly (even if unconsciously) on 
the other hand, that our faculties are adequate for an 
intellectual grasp on the whole of the revelation: or 
that scriptural truths about the Threefold Personality can 
only be saved from being rejected as irrational, by being 
brought into direct, and measurable, relation with the 
realized consciousness of man. I am certain that whatever 
is completely outside human consciousness in this matter, 
is also of necessity outside human intelligibleness. This 
is a thought to be urged not so much in the way of 
apology—as an excuse to hide or palliate failure. Rather it 
is a principle of most positive and illuminating importance. 
It is a principle to be pressed forward, with emphasis, into 
the utmost prominence, as indispensable for intelligence. 
And in the light of it, we certainly shall not be likely to 
set out with any antecedent expectation of being able to 
explain or to apprehend that supreme all-inclusive 
consciousness, which, being One, is mutually Three; 
and being mutually Three, is One. 

But if we cannot realize as from within, the conscious- 
ness of God: and can see quite clearly beforehand that 
we so obviously and necessarily cannot realize it, that it 


164 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


would zpso facto not be Divine consciousness if we could: 
there are nevertheless some propositions about it, which we 
can see, as from without, to be necessary truths. One 
such is of crucial importance for our present purpose. 
We can see that Personality of Supreme, or Absolute, 
or Eternal Being, cannot be without self-contained 
mutuality of relations. Wisdom in unique solitariness of 
existence, would have neither meaning nor content as 
wisdom. Will, existing absolutely alone, would not be 
will, Even yet more obviously, Love existing as a sole 
and single unit, could not possibly be Love! If God is 
Personal at all: and if Will and Wisdom and Love are 
elements in the conception of Personality: it follows, from 
analysis of the necessary meaning and implications, even 
of the inchoate personality of which we ourselves are 
conscious in ourselves, that Divine Personality cannot 
mean a merely sole and unrelated unit. There must be in 
Itself both subject and object; and moreover a mutual 
relation of subject and object: that is to say a mutually 
personal relation. There must be mutuality of con- 
templation, mutuality of Love. What, as subject, finds 
its object within itself: must itself also, as object, be 
contemplated and loved, by that object, within itself, 
which becomes subject in contemplating and loving. 
Less than this does not constitute a real mutuality: and 
real mutuality is the one thing which I can see to be 
an intellectual necessity in my thought of Divine 
Personality,—so necessary that Divine Personality cannot 
even be thought without it. But the mutuality would 
not be real, unless the subject which becomes object, and 

1 A somewhat striking saying has been quoted from the Valentinians, in the 
midst of a context which is not valuable at all : see + Hippolyt. Ref. omn. Heer. ” 
Lib. vi. 29. ’Haret de av yovipos, eSofev ait mote TO KdAXCTOV Kal 
Tehedrarov, 6 oy) eixev ev avT@, yevvyjrar kat mpoaya'yety. Pidéepnpos 


yap ovK Av. ‘Ayaan yap, dyoiv, iv ddos, 7 S& dydarn ovK eorw 
dydrn, édv pa) 7 Td ayomwpevor. 





hi 


viit.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 165 


the object which becomes subject, were, on each side, alike 
and equally Personal. 

I am not sure that this is not the one thing in respect 
of Divine Personality of which we can with most unfailing 
certainty be said to have a real intellectual grasp. We 
see not merely that an inherent mutuality is authoritatively 
implied or revealed. We can see that it is intellectually 
impossible that it should be otherwise. We can see that 
eternal Personality, without mutual relation in itself, could 
not be eternal Personality after all. 

This position is of great importance to us in more 
directions than one. In the first place it is the final and 
absolute answer to all those who might have been inclined 
to suppose that our primary insistence on the Unity of 
Deity was too sweeping in tone; and therefore unorthodox 
in the direction of Sabellianism. But the tendency of 
Sabellian thought is something widely different. This 
would conceive of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as diverse 
manifestations or aspects of one single God. He reveals 
Himself now as Father, now as Son, and now as Spirit. 
All three manifestations are true. But He who so diversely 
manifests Himself, is still one indistinguishable He. Now 
this may have some character of truth about it, up to 
a certain point, which it is wholly beyond our power to 
define. But there is one crucial defect about it, a defect 
which, for us, condemns the language as impossible. For 
it degrades the Persons of Deity into aspects. Now there 
can be no mutual relation between aspects. The heat 
and the light of flame cannot severally contemplate, and 
be in love with, one another. Whereas real mutuality,— 
mutuality which involves on both sides personal capacities, 
—is the one thing which we most unflinchingly assert. 

But while we insist, in the most uncompromising way, 
upon the essential unity of God, it is well to remember 
that the solitariness of the unit is not the only, or the 


166 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


highest form, under which we are capable of conceiving 
unity. The unity of all-comprehensive inclusiveness is 
a higher mode of unity than the unity of singular dis- 
tinctiveness, And the form or mode under which the 
highest unity is in fact revealed to our imagination is that 
living unity, which absolutely requires some kind of dis- 
tinctness as a condztio sine gua non for its own possibility, 
—the unity of infinite love. The unity is not the unity 
of number, but the unity of the Spirit. And it is as “the 
bond of peace, which is love” that the unity of the Spirit 
is characterized.’ 

But again, when we try to think of the supreme unity 
of the Spirit, as love, it is necessary to repeat the caution 
against allowing our imagination to interpret the words 
too exclusively in the light of present human experience. 
lt is probable that to many of us the unity of love sounds 
far less real as unity than the unit of number, and that 
it may seem little less than a quibble of words to rank 
it, seriously, as unity, higher. Why so? Because our 
present experience is mainly of love between persons, 
whose absolute distinctness from one another we assume 
(and exaggerate in assuming) as the basis of love. Such 
distinctness, amounting to severance, we read into our 
conceptions of love, and so transfer it, with our conceptions 
of love, to any sphere, or relation, of which love is pre- 
dicable. But this assumption of severance is precisely 
the assumption against which we feel ourselves free most 
emphatically to protest. This is once more to make the 
negation “is not” cardinal to the very idea of personality ; 
while the extent and range of the “is not” are tacitly 
pressed tar beyond any point at which they can be 
asserted legitimately. If it is to be logically allowed 
that any kind of distinctness, in any sense, involves the 
correlative possibility of the use of some kind of negation: 

1 Eph. iv. 3 with Col. iii. 14. 


4 
; 








VIII. THE HOLY SPIRIT 167 


yet for us it is probably almost, if not quite, impossible 
to assert such a negative without over-asserting it. 

Thus to say that the Father is not the Son, and that 
the Son is not the Spirit, whatever element there may be 
in it of truth—and of course there is truth in it,— 
is yet to say, to our apprehensions, too much. For each 
is God, the One God ; and all are inseparable. 

You may say, no doubt, that the Father was not 
Incarnate. But the Son who was Incarnate, was the 
complete expression, in humanity, of the Father. He 
was the actual, and adequate, revelation of the Father,— 
the brightness of His glory, the express image of His 
Person. In flesh He could say of Himself, remonstrating 
with the blindness of His disciples, “Have I been so long 
time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? 
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,”? and “I 
and the Father are one.”? It is difficult to see how words 
could go further in the assertion of veritable oneness ; 
which yet is other than mere (and so to say) mechanical 
identity, not because such identity would be a more perfect 
form of oneness ; but because such identity, by destroying 
the possibility of mutual relation, would destroy the very 
basis of that highest oneness which is oneness in the Spirit 
of Love. It would substitute verbal tautology for a living 
unity. The unity, such as it was, would become a truism: 
but, as truism, it would be no longer worth asserting ; it 
would be unity, indeed, but without either meaning or 
life. 

Again you may say that the Son did not descend at 
Pentecost. But the indwelling of the Spirit zs the one 
possibility,—is the vital reality,—of the Son’s indwelling. 
To have the Spirit is to have the Son. No one can have 
the Spirit, and not thereby have the Father and the Son: 
neither is there any other conceivable possibility of having 

* John xiv. 9. 2 John x. 30, 


168 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


the Father and the Son, save in, and as, personally in- 
dwelling Spirit. “If a man love Me, he will keep My 
word: and My Father will love him, and We will come 
unto him, and make our abode with him.”! How? 
And so, further; “He that abideth in the teaching, the 
same hath both the Father and the Son.” Again how? 
This is the answer; “Hereby know we that we abide in 
Him, and He in us, decause He hath given us of His 
Spirit.”® “Hereby we know that He abideth in us, dy 
the Spirit which He gave us.’* It is thus that the state- 
ment that His withdrawal from them was for their advan- 
tage is fully explained and justified. “Nevertheless I tell 
you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: 
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; 
but if I go, I will send Him unto you.’® It is thus that 
the promise of His own return to them is abundantly 
verified. “A little while and ye behold Me no more: 
and again a little while and ye shall see Me.® . . . ye there- 
fore now have sorrow: but I will see you again and your 
heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from 
you.”” “T will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, 
even the Spirit of Truth: whom the world cannot receive ; 
for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: ye know 
Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you. 
I will not leave you desolate: I come unto you. Yet 
a little while, and the world beholdeth Me no more; but 
ye behold Me: because I live, ye shall live also, In 
that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in 
Me, and I in you.” ® 

Observe, it is not for an instant that the disciples are 
to have the presence of the Spirit zmstead of having the 


1 John xiv. 23. 22John 9. 3 1 John iv. 13. 
* r John iii. 24. 5 John xvi. 7. § John xvi. 16, 19. 
7 John xvi. 22. 8 John xiv. 16-20, 








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vill.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 169 


presence of the Son. But to have the Spirit zs to have the 
Son. Again it is not for an instant that this is a sort of 
indirect or secondary mode of having the presence of the 
Son; as we, in our bodily existence in space and time, 
are forced into current phrases which make “presence 
in the spirit” a sort of apology or substitute (and some- 
times a very lame one) for “reality” of presence: quite 
the contrary: this is the only mode of presence which 
could be quite absolutely direct, and primary, and real. 
Any presence of the Son other than this; any presence 
of the Son other than as Spirit, within, and as, ourselves, 
characterizing and constituting the very reality of what 
we ourselves are; would be, by comparison, remote, in- 
effective, unreal: nay, it would be, after all, a form of 
absence, a substitute for the presence which alone can be 
called true or real. 

There are not, then, three separate spheres of spiritual 
operation upon us, which the good theologian is to be 
careful to demarcate exactly, and not confound: the 
sphere of the operation of the Father, and the sphere 
of the operation of the Son, and the sphere of the opera- 
tion of the Holy Ghost! The operation is the operation of 
One God, Father at once and Son: and both, in and 
through Spirit. 

All these are truths which our minds very quickly 
outrun and obscure, finding that they have already under- 
stood far too much, whenever they make the apparently 


1 *¢ Whatsoever God doth work, the hands of all three Persons are jointly 
and equally in it according to the order of that connexion, whereby they each 
depend upon other. And therefore albeit in that respect the Father be first, 
the Son next, the Spirit last, and consequently nearest unto every effect which 
groweth from all three, nevertheless, they all being of one essence, are like- 
wise all of one efficacy. Dare any man unless he be ignorant altogether how 
inseparable the Persons of the Trinity are, persuade himself that every one of 
them may have their sole and several possessions, or that we being not 
partakers of all, can have fellowship with any one? Hooker, V. lvi. 5, 


p- 248, 


170 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHaAP, 


obvious assertion (which in some sense, that is hard for us 
to limit adequately, no doubt represents Divine truth) 
that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the 
Holy Ghost. Indeed, even while we admit that there is a 
place, and a cogent necessity, forthe negative assertion, we 
may perhaps legitimately doubt whether even the contra- 
dictory affirmative, (not as a substitute for, but as supplement- 
ing, the negative,) might not also, in its own way, express 
to thoughtful minds as much, or almost as much, of the 
incomprehensible completeness of the Being of God. 

But to go back a little. There is another line of 
thought along which we are greatly helped by a firm 
grasp of the intellectual position that Personality which is 
supreme, all-inclusive, and eternal, must contain mutuality 
of relation within itself. For in the light of this thought 
we Can see, in a way which is practically useful, the limit 
of the suggestiveness of even the most suggestive analogies 
in human consciousness, which have been used to illustrate 
the Divine Threefoldness in unity. Such analogies are, up 
to a certain point, of very real value. They have often 
served to make minds really see that there is more 
complexity in existence than their yrzmé facie logic had 
been prepared to tolerate, or admit to be possible. 
They have often given real glimpses of profound meaning 
to statements which had once been thought really 
meaningless) When St Augustine, expounding the 
Apostles’ Creed, explains that the spring, and the river, 
and the glass of water drawn from the river, are alike one 
and the same, “water,’4—though the glassful is not 
the river, and the river is not the spring: or that the root, 
and the trunk, and the branches, are all one “wood,’— 
though the branches are not the trunk, nor the trunk the 
root : he is really, so far, helping minds to mental insight 
beyond and behind a difficulty, originated in the mind, 


1 De fide et symbolo, 17, pp» 73, 74+ 


VIII.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 171 


which, if the mind were not helped, would have made belief 
impossible. But though they help the mind beyond 
its first confidently dogmatic incredulity, such analogies 
really carry the mind but a little way towards under- 
standing the Trinity ; and clearly break to pieces if pressed 
too far. 

And so with the more serious analogies of his formal 
treatise De Trinitate. There is the “Trinity” in man of 
(1) his own rational capacity, (2) his reflexive contemplation 
of his reason and himself reasoning, (3) the love which he 
feels for himself and the reason that isin him. There is 
the “Trinity” of memory, and reason, and will. Or, in 
outward acts of sight, there is (1) the visible object, (2) 
the impression thereof upon the eye, and (3) the conscious 
attention, which is the unifying of the other two. Or 
there is, in imaginative memory (1) the recalled impression 
of things seen or heard, (2) the consideration of them, 
(3) the recalling and considering will. 

Again, from other sides we are familiar with the old 
analogy of the family—man made at last complete 
as father, and mother, and child. Again, man at once 
is body, soul, and spirit. Again man is emotion, and 
reason, and will. Again man is rational and moral and 
spiritual, and in these three, is one. The very multiplicity 
of these analogies, while it does not show that they have 
had no use, is at least a caution against assigning any very 
high value to any of them. Each in its way is a sugges- 
tion, and possibly for the moment a really illuminating one, 

1 ** As the sense of human personality grew deeper, particularly, as we have 
seen, under Christian influence, its triune character was generally recognized, 
Augustine marks an epoch in the subject, and is its best exponent, ‘I exist,’ 
he says, ‘and I am conscious that I exist, and I love the existence and the 
consciousness; and all this independently of any external influence.’ And again, 
*I exist, I am conscious, I will. I exist as conscious and willing, I am con- 
scious of existing and willing, I will to exist and to be conscious ; and these 


three functions, though distinct, are inseparable and form one life, one mind, 
one essence.’” Illingworth, B. L, III., p. 71. 


172 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


But neither any one of them, nor (still less) all together, go 
far towards enabling uni-personal man to enter into the 
consciousness of Tri-Personality. 

Moreover there is always a considerable danger about 
a line of thought which depends upon emphasizing 
distinction of qualities. If I distinguish a Trinity of 
Righteousness, Wisdom, and Love, I am not only 
substituting abstract for personal terms; but I make it 
exceedingly difficult to predicate Righteousness of Wisdom, 
or Wisdom of Righteousness, or either of these of Love, or 
Love of either of these. I may find indeed a new 
dialectical reason for the inseparableness of the Persons of 
the Trinity, and say, as many have said with Athanasius, 
that the Son must be cozval with the Father, because the 
Eternal Father can never have been sundered from His own 
Eternal Wisdom; but to say this involves the perilous 
consequence that the Eternal Father, if, or in so far as, 
He can in thought be distinguished from the Eternal Son, 
or the Eternal Spirit, must v2 Zerminorum be distinguished 
also from Wisdom, and from Love. I have then not only 
substituted a term which does not suggest personality ; 
but I have destroyed the possibility of a personal inter- 
pretation of my term. The three terms cannot rightly be 
distinguished as being severally Righteousness, Wisdom, 
and Love; when Righteousness, Wisdom, and Love must 
of necessity be predicated of every one of the three terms 
severally. Perhaps no one can read the orations against 
the Arians without feeling the difficulty under which 
Athanasius laboured, in having to deal with thoughts of 
this character without the illuminating assistance of the 
word Personality.? 

The suggestions then which have been quoted do not 
carry us more than a little way. In comparison with the 
vagueness of suggestions like these, we are touching firm 

1 See Note A, at the end of the chapter. 


re yi 


viit.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 173 


ground intellectually, when we assert the necessity of 
mutuality of relation in the Being of God; and certainly 
there is’ not one of these illustrations which adequately 
realizes what we mean by mutuality. 

Then there is another illustration, which is put forward 
on somewhat different ground, as necessary to thought. 
“We shall see,’ writes Mr Illingworth, “that human 
personality is essentially triune, not because its chief 
functions are three—thought, desire, and will—for they 
might perhaps conceivably be more, but because it consists 
of a subject, an object, and their relation. A person is, as 
we have seen, a subject who can become an object to 
himself, and the relation of these two terms is necessarily 
a third term.”! But even of this statement, however true 
it may be as far as it goes, I think we shall fee! that it 
has carried us but a very little way towards realizing the 
conception of a threefoldness of personality, in which 
subject is also object, and object is also subject, and the 
logical relation between them is itself both. And yet, even 
at the very moment that our imagination necessarily stops 
short of it, we can see intellectually that (whether it be in 
Twofoldness or Threefoldness, or more) it is precisely this 
relation of personal mutuality, and nothing less than this, 
which our own intellectual necessity requires, 

The difficulty no doubt, with all analogies is their 
limitedness ; and all these fail alike in that they all give 
us aspects or relations which, however intelligible as aspects 
or relations, are not personal; and are not mutually subject 
and object to one another. 

There is however one other analogy or illustration, on 
which I should like to dwell a little further. It does not 
transcend this inevitable limitation. It is not therefore 
adequate. It will not perform the impossible requirement 
of making Tri-Personality intelligible, as from within, to 

‘Bampton Lectures, III. p. 69. 


174 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


uni-personal consciousness. And yet there are directions 
in which it appears to me to throw somewhat more light 
upon this mystery of thought, than the analogies which 
have been more familiarly used. This is the threefoldness 
which is involved whenever I describe or distinguish what 
a man is in the following relations. First, then, there is 
the man as he really is in himself, invisible, indeed, 
and inaccessible,—and yet, directly, the fountain, origin, 
and cause of everything that can be called in any 
sense himself. Secondly, there is himself as projected 
into conditions of visibleness,—the overt expression or 
utterance of himself. This, under the conditions of our 
actual experience, will mean for the most part his 
expression or image as body,—the touch of his hand, 
the tone of his voice, the shining of his eye, the utterance 
of his words: all, in a word, that makes up, to us, that 
outward expression of himself, which we call himself, and 
which he himself ordinarily recognizes as the very mirror 
and image and reality of himself. And thirdly, there is 
the reply of what we call external nature to him—his opera- 
tion or effect. There is the painting, or the Cathedral, 
which expresses the very spirit of artist or architect,— 
the palpable realization of his secret vision within. There 
is the deathless poem of the poet: the regenerated people 
—which is the work of the noble politician’s life of 
sacrifice: there is the sublime insight of the inspired 
theologian which has become the daily light of the life of 
tens of thousands: there is the devoted love in the hearts of 
others which has sprung up in them as inevitable response, 
kindled by the devotion of his love to them. In a word, 
there is the echo or image of himself, responsive to 
himself, which comes back to him, as from without: the 
response of outside objects to himself: or rather his own 
response which he has wrought out to himself, in, and out 
of, that which had been, or had seemed to be, beyond, and 


ee ee Pe eer, eS 





viii] THE HOLY SPIRIT 175 


apart from, himself. There is that effect, or extension, of 
himself, by which what had been distinguishable from him- 
self, comes to be wholly informed by, and alive with, and 
therefore a real expression or method of, himself. It is he 
himself, by virtue of what he is within himself,—but by 
virtue of it as exerted, expressed, or uttered,—who has 
really had the power of so informing and wielding that 
which seemed outside himself, that it too has become a 
response to his utterance,—the response which he himself 
has wrought,—and, so far as its capacity extends, an image 
therefore also of what he himself is. 

The music of the musician: the poetry of the poet: 
the work which the devoted pastor has wrought: there 
are times at least in which we feel that in these we come 
nearer to the man’s very self than is, in any other way, 
even conceivable. At the least, no conception of himself, 
could be anything approaching to adequate or complete, 
of which such things did not form—not a part only but 
a very overshadowing and vital element. And meanwhile 
in the larger thought of himself which includes these 
things, and dwells with special emphasis on the thought 
of his operation, not as external effect which as such has 
ceased to be himself, but as his self-wrought work of 
response to himself, in which himself is the more perfected 
and magnified; there do seem to be at least suggestive 
glimpses such as give real help to the mind, if not towards 
grasping Tri-Personal consciousness, at least towards an 
intelligent conception of the Divine reality of the Holy 
Ghost. 

It will be felt, however, with some justice, that apart 
from other criticisms to which this analogy (like others) 
may be liable : it is impossible that any analogy can be 
really adequate which would find a perfect mirror of the 
Trinity in any form of strictly uni-personal consciousness 
or work. No analysis of what is contained within a 


176 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar, 


solitary consciousness, however suggestive, can possibly 
be adequate. This is why the “family” analogy, rough 
and external as it is in itself, has yet a valuable place 
among analogies. For in fact no man’s personality is 
complete in himself, or in anything that is solely regarded 
as an operation of himself. It is in the reflexive corre- 
spondence of other personalities that any man approaches 
his own completeness. The more truly he is echoed and 
reproduced in others, the more nearly does he approach 
to the complete possibility of himself. Perhaps for this 
very reason an analogy which introduces his operation 
and effect, especially when conceived in the form of the 
regeneration of others, is more hopeful than any analogy 
which avowedly consists in analysis of his solitary con- 
sciousness. But no analogy drawn from an imperfect 
personality can truly mirror the Trinity of God. And 
every personality zs imperfect, which is not yet con- 
summated (in a way we can but dimly foreshadow) in 
mutual relation; that is, as perfectly echoed and com- 
plemented in the personality of others. 

I do not know, meanwhile, whether the attempt to 
make use of such suggestiveness as the word response 
may contain, will have been felt just now by any one 
to be open to objection, on the ground that it does not 
obviously lead us to the doctrine of the Personality 
of the Holy Ghost. It does in fact lead us further in 
this direction, a good deal, than many words which are 
in familiar and helpful use. But it seems worth while 
to enter some protest against allowing such a considera- 
tion as this to come in for the present, at all. The doctrine 
of the Personality of the Holy Ghost, however dutifully 
accepted, is in no case a doctrine that is easy to be 
intellectually understood. It is almost certainly a mistake 
to let a doctrine of this kind, which is certainly true, but 
which we can, at the best, but imperfectly apprehend, 


Pe eee 


ta 


VIII.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 177 


come in to deter us from dwelling upon those aspects of 
the nature and work of the Spirit, which are also true, and 
which our intelligence can more definitely follow. Thus 
the Holy Spirit is not less “a gift,’ because a gift is not 
itself a personal term. We undoubtedly do well to make 
the most of the lower aspects of the truth, if only that 
we may go on from them to the higher. The truth that 
He is Personal, is certainly not to warn us off from such 
conceptions about Him as are to us most naturally 
intelligible. If we are ever to reach a higher under- 
standing, we shall do well to give full scope and play 
to the lower first. Whatever would for us be true of 
the Spirit,—as gift, as inspiration, as empowerment,— 
if the Spirit were rightly spoken of always and only in 
the neuter gender as avrd, is certainly no less true, even 
if at many points it may be felt to be inadequate, when 
we advance further on towards realizing, as well as avowing, 
that He is indeed Avrés. 

It may be worth while to emphasize this insistence by 
dwelling for a few moments upon a parallel instance of 
its importance. When minds are at work, not upon the 
mystery of Tri-Personality, but upon the primary Theistic 
truth of the Personal Being of God: there are stages at 
which an antithesis will present itself to the imagination 
between the comparative limitedness of the personal 
conception, and the grand immensity of the impersonal. 
Such a sense of contrast is perfectly natural to minds 
which approach the question of Theism from the region 
of abstract philosophical thought ; and still more to those 
which approach it from the region of physical science. 
Either Existence, First cause, ultimate Unity, etc., on the 
one hand, or on the other Law, Energy, Harmony, perhaps 
even such pervading principles as ether, or electricity, 
seem indefinitely vaster than anything which experience 


of the word personality suggests. The fact is that we 
M 


178 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY __ [cuap, 


have no direct experience of personality except as ex- 
pressed by man—with and through a material stature 
and strength which we feel to be comparatively con- 
temptible. And at a certain stage of imagination, it is 
almost impossible to get rid of the instinct of measuring 
personality by men’s bodily stature, conceiving of it as 
if it necessarily existed in about six-foot lengths of 
matter. No wonder that the lightning should seem 
to be, as a conception, indefinitely larger than such a 
conception of personality as this. 

Now it need hardly be said that at the stage at which 
such abstract words as Energy or Law seem immeasurably 
to transcend the limitedness of the personal conception, it 
would be most unwise to try to press any man’s mind into 
nevertheless accepting such a misconception as would be 
involved, to him, in the unexplained proposition that God 
is Personal. It is precisely because the proposition has 
presented itself thus to their minds, that many men have 
felt that their intellectual self-respect absolutely required 
the rejection of the proposition. We do not rise to the true 
idea of God by clinging tight, at any and every stage, 
to a personal form of statement into which we can put 
no intelligible meaning. 

On the contrary, it is often definitely helpful, 
even amongst people who have no doubt of the 
doctrine, and are, in intention and life, quite definitely 
religious, to drop for a time the personal, and sub- 
stitute for it the abstract, form of phrase. We may 
do it a little even with such scientific abstractions as 
Force or Law. Much more do we help ourselves by 
doing it with the religious abstractions Omnipotence, 
Wisdom, Righteousness, Perfectness, Love. “Love is 
my shepherd:” “I believe in the Almightiness of Good- 
ness:” “I am sure of the pardon of Righteousness:” “I 
commit myself to perfect Wisdom:” “lI will try to feel 











VIII. ] THE HOLY SPIRIT 179 


trust in the lovingness of Love itself:” the habit of 
dwelling upon such thoughts as these, substituting in 
each case an abstract term for the personal name of God, 
would on the one hand utterly make impossible some 
of the commonplaces of devout, but unintelligent, religion. 
No one would continue to say “There is One above”— 
as though in certain somewhat higher regions of space, 
amongst the tens of thousands, or millions, of existences, 
there was to be found “one” who did this, or willed that, 
or had to be, in one way or another, attended or submitted 
to. No one would ever say “It is our duty to submit” 
—as though to a tyrant will which it was morally, as well 
as materially, prudent not to challenge. “Submit” to 
perfect Wisdom! “Be resigned” to perfect Love! No 
one would set himself, on imperfect and unworthy con- 
ceptions of prayer, to try and bend the will of God to his 
own: as though God needed information, or guidance, or 
urging, that He might know what was wise, or might 
become what was kind! On the other hand such a habit 
would itself be a stage towards the mental realization that 
these abstractions themselves, so far from really transcend- 
ing personality, or being wider than it in range or in- 
clusiveness, were but several elements within the ultimate 
meaning of personality itself. It is through accustoming 
itself to them, and to thought in terms of them, that the 
mind would gradually realize, with a more and more 
complete and instinctive fulness, that every one of these 
—Law, Power, Cause, ultimate Being, Reason, Wisdom, 
Holiness, Love,—and others like these—of necessity is, 
in its ultimate climax of meaning, Personal: and moreover 
that as they all are severally Personal, so are they 
ultimately all the same one, identical, Personal: and that 
this is what we mean by the Personal God: not a limited 
alternative to unlimited abstracts: but the transcendent 
and inclusive completeness of them all, 


180 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHapP. 


Now just as in this case we prepare ourselves for a 


very much higher appreciation of Personality, by dropping 
for a time the personal language, and speaking not of 
He and Him, but of qualities or properties, which at least 
are not, as such, obviously personal: so in respect of the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, it is at least more than 
possible that we may ultimately gain, not lose, in richness, 
by keeping the doctrine that He is Personal for a while, 
as doctrine, in the background; not using it to crush or 
disallow our more rudimentary apprehensions of the work 
of the Spirit, whether regarded as gift or as response; but 
rather reserving it to be, in ways which we may, or 
’ may not, fully understand, their ultimate climax and 
crown. 

No one then should ever refuse, or treat with suspicion, 
any meaning which he may seem to himself to attach 
to the “Spirit of God,” on the ground that such meaning 
may appear to ignore His several Personality, and realize 
Him less as Person than as quality. Incomplete it is 
bound to be. But doubtless it is, so far as it goes, a 
perfectly true and significant line of thought. Let us 
give all the meaning that we possibly can to the presence 
of the Spirit of God as “It.” Let us lose no item of the 
significance which we are capable of attaching to the 
thought of God’s Spirit as gift, as influence, as quality, 
as echo, as effect. Let us freely pursue any such line 
of thought as is suggested by saying that to imagine 
God without the Holy Spirit is to imagine Him, jer 
impossibile, as so contained within Himself as wholly 
to be without operation or effect. By and by, it may be, 
we shall rise beyond these things ;—but we shall rise by 
and through these things, and not through evacuating 
or disallowing them,—to understand, with greater fulness, 
or with less, that the influence or quality, the operation 
or effect, the echo or response, is itself also Personal: 


Bi 


si eet Se 


“he 
ae 


— 





rits.3 THE HOLY SPIRIT 181 


Personal as the Personal Presence of God,—in God 
Himself, for His Spirit is Himself, and He “is Spirit”: 
Personal moreover, as the Personal Presence of God— 
in all creatures made by Himself responsive to Himself, 
as in the order or beauty of inanimate nature: Personal 
moreover, as the Personal Presence of God, more wonder- 
fully still, in all created spirits, made capable by Himself 
of personal response to Himself; Personal in their possi- 
bility of spontaneous homage, their answer to God of 
Divine contemplation and love; Personal as the inmost 
constitutive reality of their God-echoing personalities, 
When we present to ourselves, in any such manner 
as this, the thought of God the Holy Spirit: at all events 
when we think of Him at all thus in relation to man: 
it is clear that we are thinking of what is, in fact, a result 
of the Incarnation. It is thus indeed, as sequel and con- 
summation of the accomplished completeness of the In- 
carnation, that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit begins 
to be unveiled to man’s thought at all: as sequel, because 
the manifestation of the Holy Ghost must follow, and 
could not precede, the Incarnate Life of God: as con- 
summation, because the significance and work of Incarna- 
tion and of atonement would be after all, without the 
Presence of the Holy Ghost, (that is, the Presence of God 
as Spirit within man’s central self,) incomplete. And 
if it is in, and through, and for the necessary completeness 
of, the Incarnation (as it is), that the doctrine of the Holy 
Ghost first begins (and begins at first incidentally in 
manner enough) to be presented to human consciousness 
at all: the reflection that this is so may perhaps encourage 
us to consider, somewhat more fully, to what an extent 
it is true that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity altogether 
is revealed in connection with, and (if we may venture 
to say so) in terms of, the Incarnation. If it is thus 
that the doctrine of God the Holy Ghost first presents 


182 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


itself as a sequel to, or element in, the full meaning of 
the mystery of Incarnation, still more, of course, is it in 
and through Incarnation that the Person of God, the 
Word, is revealed to man. It is of course a mere 
truism to say this. And yet we may hardly have re- 
cognized to what an extent this mere truism may justify 
the further suggestion, that the terminology under which 
the great Revelation of the Trinity is made, in its final 
and most authoritative form, is terminology which, as 
terminology, is conditioned by the fact of the Incarnation. 

“ Baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” In context with our 
present thought, can we refrain from recognizing that it is 
through, and out of, rather than irrespectively of, the condi- 
tions and significance of Incarnation, that the Second Person 
of the adorable Trinity is revealed specifically under the 
title “Son”: and the Third Person specifically under the 
title “Ghost” or “Spirit”? It is hardly necessary, I hope, 
in saying this, to guard beforehand against being supposed 
to suggest that it is only in the Incarnation, or as result 
from it, that God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost, have 
reality of Personal distinguishableness from God the 
Father. Not so. The Three Persons of Godhead are 
co-eternal. Nevertheless, whatever profoundly true relation 
to the eternal distinctions between the Persons of Godhead 
may have been represented—first by the historical facts 
of Incarnation, and secondly by the terms which are 
correlative to those facts: what is suggested is that the 
terms in which the truths are expressed (as distinguished 
from the ultimate reality of the truths which lie behind 
those terms) are terms which rise more immediately out 
of the temporal facts of the Incarnation, than out of the 
Eternal relations of Divine Being. The words “Father” 
and “Son” are, of course, mutually correlative words. 
Moreover it is plain that these words, as used in human 





VIII.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 183 


language, present themselves to human understanding, as a 
metaphor borrowed from human experience. 

It is worth while to justify, for a moment, the use of the 
word metaphor, because the word has been abused and is 
justly suspected: and the use and abuse need to be 
carefully and accurately distinguished. If, for example, 
our Lord’s words in the third or sixth of St John, are 
explained as “metaphor”; this often means that they 
are explained away, as having a certain resemblance or 
analogy to truth, zzstead of being really true themselves, 
This of course is wholly illegitimate. The mistake arises 
as a result of a tacit (but false) assumption that a 
metaphorical truth is zfso facto “less true” than what we 
call a literal one. The fact is that almost every word 
of deep spiritual import is a metaphor: that is to say, is 
expressed in terms of a likeness drawn immediately 
from material things. It is so with “sin”; it is so with 
“grace”; it is so with “justification.” “Blessed are they 
that do hunger and thirst after righteousness” is a 
metaphor or analogy from material starvation. But it is 
a disastrous, though deeply ingrained error, to assume that 
the material experiences are absolutely, and the spiritual 
only relatively, and less really, true: or that the meaning 
of the words in a material context is the true gauge 
and measure of their meaning when spiritually applied. 
This instinct is nearly the precise reverse of truth. 
The material experience is as a sort of parable or 
hint which serves to suggest a term for describing the 
spiritual. But the term, as borrowed for spiritual use, 
means something not less, but far more, than ever it 
meant in the material sphere: the spiritual significance 
outruns the material, not only in width of content, 
but in profoundness of truth. Spiritual hunger may 
be rarer than material among men who are still largely 
animal: but spiritual hunger, where realized, is more 


184 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


overwhelming, more intense, more real, as hunger, than 
physical decay for lack of food. And it would be 
obviously fatuous to measure the awful significance of 
such metaphorical words as sin, or judgment, or grace, 
or spirit, by the meaning which the words once bore in 
material experience; though the words were borrowed 
from material experience, and their material meaning 
served as the first suggestion by which some expression 
was given to the spiritual idea. 

It is plain, then, that in the legitimate sense of the 
word, the correlative terms “ Father” and “Son” are words 
of metaphor ; that is to say, that the words, in human use, 
have their primary significance in the region of human 
experience: and that all other uses are based upon, 
and borrowed from, however completely they may trans- 
cend, this. And the same of course is obviously true 
of the word IIvevpa, Spirit, or Breath. It follows from 
this that however illuminating, on some sides, may be the 
revelation which the words contain: it is true also that 
men’s minds have always to be on their guard against 
being misled by the words. They are clearly capable of 
being interpreted amiss. And it is notorious that, 
as a matter of fact, men’s minds have found very con- 
siderable difficulty in guarding adequately against 
some misconceptions, which have been chiefly suggested 
by the words. It was an old problem to find illustrative 
instances which would show how an effect might be 
neither later, nor lesser, than its cause. But however 
complete may have been the success of theological 
teachers in this direction, it can hardly be doubted that the 
problem was caused by the extreme difficulty, to human 
thought, of using the terms “Father” and “Son” at 
all, without projecting too materially, across the concep- 
tion of the Eternal Being of God, the shadow of the 
associations of these human words; without (that is to 


ih ies 
SL ee ee a 


- 











VIII. ] THE HOLY SPIRIT 185 


say) carrying both the distinction which the words imply 
between the two, and the inferiority and posteriority of the 
one to the other, much further than they ought to be 
carried. 

Now I cannot but suggest that this difficulty, which has 
been felt in all ages of the Church, is materially lightened, 
if we are willing to recognize that the terms themselves, as 
applied to the Persons of the Godhead, have their primary 
reference rather to the manifestation of God in the Incar- 
nation and its outflowing consequences, than to the Eternal 
relations regarded in themselves. I say their primary 
reference ; because it would seem impossible for a Christian 
to doubt that there must be that in the Eternal relations 
of the First and the Second Persons of the Trinity, with 
which the words “Father” and “Son” have a real and 
legitimate correspondence; even if it be true that these 
words, being primarily occasioned by the conditions 
which the fact of Incarnation established, might seem by 
themselves to overstate to our imaginations that Eternal 
relation with which they nevertheless profoundly corre- 
spond. For the most part it is difficult to test ‘such a 
suggestion as this by the language of the New Testament ; 
because the mighty fact of the Incarnation so absolutely 
dominates the entire revelation of the New Testament, 
and characterizes and shapes all its thought and language ; 
that it is comparatively rarely that we can, in the New 
Testament, stand aside (so to speak) in thought or even 
in phrase, from that one dominating conception. But it is 
certainly very significant, that in the one passage which, 
more clearly than any other, goes back behind the fact of 
the Incarnation, or the consciousness of the Incarnate, to 
speak of the eternal relations, as such, within the eternal 
existence of Deity,—that is to say, the first fourteen verses 
of the Gospel of St John,—the word “Son” (and with 
it the correlative word “ Father ”) does drop out altogether, 


186 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


-and another word takes its place. It will be recognized 
at once that the title Adyos, or Word, while it is full indeed 
of its own mysterious significance, is wholly without the 
strong suggestions—of sharp distinction and emphatic 
subordination—which it is so hard to separate from the 
words Father and Son, so long as they are thought of 
as descriptive primarily of the Eternal, rather than of 
the Incarnate, relations. 

But what is it that is practically meant, in the many 
familiar contexts of the New Testament which will occur 
to our minds, by emphasizing this prominence of the idea 
of Incarnation, as that to which the words primarily refer, 
and in which they find their directest and most unqualified 
fulness of significance? It is that the Fatherhood of God 
is, in the most unqualified directness and inclusiveness of 
that word, towards man ; and that Sonship, as predicated 
of God, is predicated ‘most absolutely and unreservedly of 
God gué Incarnate. If then we should venture to paraphrase 
the great Name of God—the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost,—describing the Threefoldness thus ; viz. God, 
the Eternal, the Infinite, in His Infinity, as Himself; God, 
as self-expressed within the nature and faculties of man, 
body, soul, and spirit,—the consummation, and interpre- 
tation, and revelation, of what true Manhood means and 
is, in its very truth, that is, in its true relation to God ; 
God, as Spirit of Beauty and Holiness—the Beauty and 
Holiness which are Himself—present in things created 
animate and inanimate, and constituting in them their 
Divine response to God; constituting above all in created 
personalities, the full reality of their personal response: 
we should be expressing, not indeed the whole truth of 
the Being of God, which no words of ours can express, 
but at least a conception which is absolutely true as far 
as it goes; and moreover the sort of conception which is 
probably most intelligible to us,—and intelligible exactly 


NS re a, 


hag 


— 
Fa 


ae Skeet eS 


a 
von 





aR 


“ut 


vItt.J THE HOLY SPIRIT 187 


along the lines suggested by the Three Names selected, 
in human language, to constitute an intelligible revelation 
to human thought.! 

The important thing to observe, for our present practical 
purpose, is that to speak, in one phrase, of God in His 
eternal self-existence, and of God Incarnate as man— 
a revelation to man at once of God’s nature and of man’s 
relation to God—is by no means altogether the same 
thing as to speak of the First Person in the eternal relation 
of Divine Being, and of the Second Person in the eternal 
relation of Divine Being: and moreover that the correlative 
phrases Father and Son, whatever analogy they may 
have with the eternal distinctions of Deity, do not corre- 
spond with, or give expression to, these eternal distinctions, 
quite so directly, or closely, or unreservedly, as to the 
relations between God the Eternal and God the Incarnate, 
: between God as God, and God as Man. 

: And if this is true, or even partly true, of the terms in 
which the Divine Name is revealed to the Church, to be 
its formula, on earth, of Baptismal admission and 
distinctively Christian blessing: still more is this thought 
true, and emphasized as true, when the phrase used is not 
so much “from God the Father, and from God the Son,” 
as rather “from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus 
Christ.” Here itis unmistakably the Human designation,— 
with whatever august associations of awe and worship—upon 
which the emphasis is laid. And as a matter of fact, it is 
this form, which, with comparatively few exceptions, is the 
characteristic formula of the New Testament. This 
emphasis upon the Incarnation is sufficiently marked, 
when the formula is threefold, as in the familiar words of 
benediction—* The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be 


1 See Note B, at the end of the Chapter. 








188 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP, 


with you all.”? It is really more marked still, in the still 
more familiar repetition of a twofold formula,—“ Yet to us 
there is One God the Father, of whom are all things, and 
we unto Him; and One Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom 
are all things, and we through Him.”? “To offer up 
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 8 
“To the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our 
Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, before 
all time and now, and for ever more. Amen.”* It is 
the new relation, in the Person of Jesus Christ, at once 
of God to Man, and of Man to God (not the Eternal 
relation between God and the Adéyos), which is before the 
thought throughout the Epistle to the Ephesians—“ Blessed 
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath 
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly 
places in Christ.” 5... “having foreordained us unto adoption 
as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself,” ®... “according 
to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him .. . to 
sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, 
and the things upon the earth.””... “God being rich in 
mercy... quickened us together with Christ, . . . made us 
to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus... 
for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for 
good works, which God afore prepared. . . . Now in Christ 
Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood 
of Christ.”®& ... “according to the eternal purpose which 
He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”® ... “to know the 
love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be 
filled unto all the fulness of God.” ... “unto Him be the 
glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all genera- 
tions for ever and ever.” “There is One Body and One 
Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your 


1 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 2 1 Cor. viii. 6. 31 Pet. ii. 5. 

4 Jude 25. 5 Eph. i. 3. 6 Eph. i. 5. 

7 Eph. i. 9-10. 8 Eph. ii. 4, 5, 6, 10, 13. ® Eph. iii. 12, 
10 Eph. iii, 19. 1 Eph. iii, 27. 


sis ec 











VIII.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 189 


calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and 
Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” 
“Even as God also in Christ forgave you.” “ Hath any 
inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God.”*® “Giving 
thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ to God, even the Father”* ... “as servants 
of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.” 5 

In context with all these phrases there can be little 
doubt as to the exact significance of the salutations with 
which this epistle both opens and closes; “Grace to you 
and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus 
Christ.”® “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, 
from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace 
be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in 
uncorruptness.”’ St Paul’s thought is not upon the 
Eternal relations of Deity, as such. His thought is upon 
the master-fact of the Incarnation of God. It would not 
be nearly so correct to paraphrase his words as a blessing 
“from the First and from the Second Persons of the 
Eternal Trinity” as rather “from God the Eternal and 
from the Incarnate, both God and Man; in whom the 
Fatherhood of God and the Sonship of Man, were ideally 
consummated, and perfectly revealed.” It isthe expression 
of Deity in Humanity, it is the inconceivable glorification 
of Humanity, as a true and worthy expression of Deity, 
it is, in a word, the Incarnation, which absolutely dominates 
all these thoughts and all these phrases from one end of 
the epistle to the other. And the “Spirit” is the direct 
outcome of the Incarnation, the Spiritual relation which 
the Incarnation has made possible, the realization and 
presence of the Incarnate within the selves of men, 
“Christ in whom, having believed, ye were sealed with the 

1 Eph. iv. 4-6. 2 Eph. iv. 32. 3 Eph. v. 5. 


4 Eph. v. 20. 5 Eph. vi. 6. 6 Eph, i. 2. 
7 Eph. vi. 23°24. 


190 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


Holy Spirit of promise which is an earnest of our inheri- 
tance” ;—!... “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the 
Father of glory may give unto you a spirit (807 iptv rvedua) 
of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”?2.. . 
“for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit 
unto the Father”? .. . “in whom ye also are builded together 
for a habitation of God in [the] Spirit” * (€ rvevparr), .. . 
“that ye may be strengthened with power through His 
Spirit in the inward man, that Christ may dwell in your 
hearts through faith,’® “giving diligence to keep the 
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is One 
Body and One Spirit." “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of 
God in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.”? 
“ Be filled with the Spirit.”* “The sword of the Spirit 
which is the word of God.”® ... “with all prayer and 
supplication praying at all seasons in the Spirit.” 

And if this sort of insistence be true in respect of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians, it will be true also in respect of 
the same forms of Christian salutation wherever they occur. 
But the connection of thought is itself established so inveter- 
ately and clearly, that we catch the echo of it, with more or 
less directness of expression, in the opening verses of 
almost every single epistle of the New Testament. “Grace 
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus 
Christ.” These words occur, with hardly a variation, at the 
opening of the Epistles to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, Titus 
and Philemon. With the addition of mercy, “Grace mercy 
and peace,” the same formula holds for 1 and 2 Timothy. 
1 Thessalonians varies only by a change of order “unto 
the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and 
the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace.” Of all 


1 Eph. i. 13, 14. 2 Eph. i. 17. 3 Eph. ii. 18, 
4 Eph. ii. 22. 5 Eph. iii. 16,17. © Eph. iv. 3, 4. 
7 Eph. iv. 30. 8 Eph. v. 18. ® Eph. vi. 17. 


10 Eph, vi. 18, 





Yaa SS eae 








VII. ] THE HOLY SPIRIT Igt 


St Paul’s epistles only that to the Colossians contains (in 
the revised text) as formula of salutation “Grace to you 
and peace from God our Father.” But even there the 
very next verse proceeds “We give thanks to God the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 
having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus”; and through- 
out the epistle the doctrine is unmistakably the same as 
that of the Ephesians. The Epistle to the Hebrews 
contains no salutation: but the opening verses are a 
splendid statement of the doctrine of the revelation of 
the eternal God “at the end of the days” in the person 
of “a Son” (margin of R.V.) who is at once the perfect 
image of the glory of the Eternal, and also the atoning 
Man. St James writes as “the servant of God and of 
the Lord Jesus Christ.” St Peter as an “apostle of 
Jesus Christ . . . according to the foreknowledge of God 
the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience 
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”; and again 
as “a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that 
have obtained a like precious faith with us in the 
righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ :- grace 
to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God 
and of Jesus our Lord.” St John writes his general 
epistle because “our fellowship is with the Father and 
with His Son Jesus Christ”; and sends greeting to the 
“elect lady,” “grace, mercy, peace, shall be with us, 
from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of 
the Father.” St Jude “a servant of Jesus Christ” writes 
“to them that are called, beloved in God the Father, and 
kept for Jesus Christ: mercy unto you, and peace and 
love be multiplied.” 

What is the meaning of the perpetual recurrence of 
these titles? Why is everything, from end to end of the 
Church life in the New Testament, and in the mouth of 
every single writer, consistently in the Name of “ God our 


192 - ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”? Why is it always 
these two? why is it that in only one single instance, 
that of 1 Peter, is there any explicit mention of the Spirit 
in immediate juxtaposition with these two? Is it a 
maimed Trinitarian formula? The fact is that the thought 
which dominates the minds of the apostolic writers is not 
so much the thought of the Eternal Threefoldness of the 
Being of God: they are not thinking directly of the 
doctrine of the Trinity as such: they are not thinking of 
the Being of Godhead as such: but they are thinking 
of the transcendent fact of the Incarnation of Deity in 
flesh. The whole horizon of their thought is immediately 
occupied by the thought of God, in His Eternity, and God, 
in His Incarnation. They are not speaking of Two Persons 
of the Trinity, with the omission of the Third. They are 
not speaking of Persons of the Trinity, as such, at all. 
The second term of their thought is not God the Eternal 
Acyos, but God incarnated as man: the flawless expression, 
in Human nature, of God. Now however much it may be 
said that the Eternal Word, and the Incarnate Christ, are 
personally One: it is quite clear that the two terms are 
not simply interchangeable. The Word was not Incarnate 
from Eternity. And though every attribute of the Eternal 
Word is predicable of the Incarnate personally; it is of 
course not true that every such attribute is predicable of 
Him as Incarnate. If the Infinite expresses Himself in 
conditions of finiteness ; that finiteness does not itself bear 
the predicates of infinitude. It is, then, expressly of the 
infinite, as finitely expressed; it is of the Incarnate, as 
incarnate ; it is of the Human revelation of God; it is of 
the transformation of the meaning of Humanity which 
results from the revelation of its capacity of expressing 
God, and is guaranteed to it in the fact, independent of 
age, of the actual consummation of that expression ; it 
is of the Divine victory in Humanity,—the Divine con- 


one bees 











vit.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 193 


secration of Humanity for ever; it is of this, and not 
directly at all of the eternal relations within Divine 
Being, that their imagination is wholly full, when they 
write all their writings, and think all their thoughts, in the 
Name of “God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 
Moreover there is another direction, in which we may 
venture to say that the term the Divine Logos, and the 
term Jesus Christ our Lord, are not, as terms, simply 
identical The-Logos indeed “became flesh.” But 
having become flesh, He was man:—man to eternity, 
in the highest perfection—which is also the revelation and 
true measure—of what manhood ideally means: man, for 
a brief term of years, under all the extremest disabilities of 
material and mortal life. The central characteristic of His 
manhood, as revealed in mortal life, was the absoluteness of 
His relation of dependence upon God. Now it is not at 
all necessary to say, either on the one hand, that the 
Person of God Incarnate was wholly distinct from the 
Person of the Eternal Father and the Eternal Spirit— 
seeing that they are inseparably One: or, on the other 
hand, that the Son of Man, in His revelation of man’s true 
relation of absolute dependence upon God, was dependent 
upon the First Person of the Blessed Trinity only, in a sort of 
imaginary separableness, and not also upon the Word and 
the Spiritt It is no objection to this, and is proof 
of no confusion of thought, if it involves the explicit 
statement that He was, on earth, dependent upon Himself. 
For the statement that His dutiful dependence, in mortality, 
was dependence on Himself, is a statement which is any- 


1My attention has been drawn to the following sentence, which might 
often, I believe, have an important application amongst ourselves : 

**Cur eequalis et una Trinitas? Responsto. Quia et sempiterna est in ipsa 
Trinitate deitas. Rogo, non animadvertis omnes pene hereses in hoc titulo 
unitam deitatem Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti blasphemare, dum hec que 
Superius uniter in Trinitate sunt dicta ad unam Personam Patris illi tantum- 
modo conferant?”  Vigilit Tapsensis de Trinitate, Lib, i. 201, p. 239, 
Migne. 

N 


194 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


how undeniably true, with whatever intellectual mystery 
it may be thought to involve, from the moment at which it 
is said that He was, as man, dependent upon “ God.” 
There is one thought more, which the subject of 
the present chapter requires. We had occasion to ask 
just now, Why is it that the formula which is so character- 
istic of Christian thought in the apostolic age, seems to be 
made up of Two terms rather than Three? Is it an 
imperfect formula which omits the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit? On one side the question has been already 
answered. It is not an imperfect formula as to the Being 
of God, for it is not a formula as to the Being of God 
at all. But does it even, in fact, omit the doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit? On the contrary, it implies it. “Grace 
and peace, from the Eternal God, and particularly from 
His Revelation and victorious work as Man, in flesh— 
to you!” This grace, this peace, no longer only in the 
Person of Jesus Christ ;—but through the Person of Jesus 
Christ, zo you, and zm you: What is this but Christ in you? 
And how Christ in you,—save in, and as, Spirit? Christ in 
you, or the Spirit of Christ in. you; these are not 
different realities ; but the one is the method of the other, 
It is in the Person of Christ that the Eternal God is 
revealed in manhood, to man. It is in the Person of 
His Spirit that the Incarnate Christ is Personally present 
within the spirit of each several man. The Holy Ghost is 
mainly revealed to us as the Spirit of the Incarnate, If it 
once be conceded that the revelation of the Holy Ghost is 
a revelation of the new Testament, not of the Old: it will 
be obvious that that revelation in the New Testament 
is made, not as an independent or separate vista into 
truth, but as a sort of necessary sequel or climax to 
the meaning of Incarnation, at the moment when Incarna- 
tion proper, that is, the life lived by God the Son in flesh, 
upon earth, was immediately drawing to its close. The — 











Ee 





VIII.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 195 


meaning of Incarnation was not exhausted ;—there is 
a sense in which it may be said to have hardly yet begun ;— 
when Jesus Christ passed away from this visible scene of 
mortal life. That real significance of Incarnation, hardly 
then as yet begun, is to be recognized not more directly in 
the contemplation of the Presence of the Son of Man 
in Heaven—with all that that contemplation carries in its 
train ;—than in the recognition of the Presence and working 
here on earth, of the Spirit of the Incarnation and of the 
Incarnate. 

The Spirit of the Incarnate is the Spirit of God. But 
it is not so much the Spirit of God, regarded in His 
eternal existence, or relation, in the Being of Deity: 
it is the Spirit of God in Humanity, the Spirit of God 
become the Spirit of man in the Person of the Incarnate,— 
become thenceforward the true interpretation and secret 
of what true manhood really is,4—it is this which is 
the distinctive revelation of the New Testament, the 
distinctive significance and life of the Church of Christ. 
This is the truth, immense in its significance for practical 
Christianity, which the so-called doctrine of the “ Double 
Procession” directly protects; and which the denial 
of that doctrine tends directly to impair. It may be 
that the removal of the “ Filioque” from the Nicene creed, 
would not necessarily imply a denial of the doctrine: but 
there can at least be little doubt, historically speaking, 
that the “Filioque” has served, to the doctrine, as a 
bulwark of great importance. 

It becomes, then, of considerable importance, to take full 
note of the passages in which the Spirit of God, become 


* This is what Dr Milligan means when he says, in somewhat obscure and 
questionable phrases, that ‘‘ the Spirit bestowed upon us by the glorified Lord is 
not the Third Person of the Trinity in the soleness of the Personality possessed 
by Him before the foundations of the world were laid,” or again, ‘‘ mot the 
Third Person of the Trinity in His absolute and metaphysical existence, but that 
Person as He is mediated by the Son, who is human as well as divine.” Zhe 
Ascension of our Lord, pp. 172 and 189. (The italics are mine.) 


196 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


the Spirit of the Christ, is spoken of directly as the Spirit 
of Christ. It is of course not necessary that this should be 
the only form of phrase. The Spirit of Christ zs the Spirit 
of God. To speak of Him as the Spirit of God does not 
exclude in any way the interpretation that He is mediated 
by Christ: that He is the Spirit of God become the Spirit 
of man in the Person of Christ. But to speak of Him as 
the Spirit of Christ does interpret the phrases which speak 
of Him simply as the Spirit of God. As a prelude to such 
passages (which are well known) it may be desirable to 
call attention to the very remarkable words which serve 
as the climax and close of the great High Priestly prayer 
of the 17th of St John. “I” that is, the Incarnate, 
“made known unto them Thy name, and will make it 
known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be 
in them, and I in them.” What is this love wherewith the 
Father loved His own Son? How can the very love of 
the Father to the Son, be itself the animating love of the 
Son’s disciples? And how is it that that indwelling 
presence of the very love of the Father towards the Son 
seems to be spoken of as so closely identified with,—per- 
haps we should say as itself actually being-—the indwelling 
presence of the Person of the Incarnate? Nothing but 
extreme familiarity could blind us to the wonder, and 
exceeding awfulness, of words like these. I do not now 
go back again over the language of the 14th, 15th, and 
16th chapters: but at least it is well to remember that all 
these chapters are the prelude which leads up to the 17th; 
and that the close of the 17th is the close of them all. 
Take with these His action on the night after the Resur- 
rection, when the work of the Incarnation, in its first part 
on earth, is complete ; and when He is therefore, by an act 
of significant symbolism, handing on or passing over to 
them, for continuance as their Spirit, the Spirit which had 
been His own. He breathed on them, and saith unto them, 


ee a ae ee a ey er 








VIII.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 197 


“Receive ye [the] Holy Ghost”—(AdBere rvetpa dyuov). 
This is not the action of one who, by prayer, would invoke 
upon them, a Spirit which is not of, or from, Himself: it is 
the symbolism rather of one who would transfer to them 
the very Spirit which animates—which may be said to Je 
—Himself. 

It is, then, in precise agreement with this that the later 
phrases of the New Testament speak. The Spirit of God 
is now the Spirit of Christ. The Presence of the Spirit is 
Christ. The Presence of the Christ is Spirit. “They 
assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered 
them not.”4 “Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with 
unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, 
are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, 
even as from the Lord the Spirit” (margin, “even as from 
the Spirit which is the Lord.” xadaep dards xvpiov rvetparos).” 
“ Because ye are sons God sent forth the Spzrit of His Son 
into our hearts, crying Abba Father.”* “For I know that 
this shall turn to my salvation, through your supplication 
and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.’* And St 
Peter looking back in retrospect upon the older prophecies, 
sees now how this had been a truth, in some sense, even of 
them, “who prophesied of the grace that should come unto 
you; searching what time or what manner of time che 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto.” 5 

There is one passage in St Paul’s epistles which has 
been hitherto omitted ; but which is really more significant 
than all these—as well from the general context in which 
it occurs, as from the things actually said. This is the 
8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. It is to be 
borne in mind that the 8th chapter is the conclusion and 
climax of the magnificent doctrinal argument of this great 


1 Acts xvi, 7. 2 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18. 3 Gal. iv. 6. 
* Phil. i. 19. 5 i Pet. i, 10, 11. 


198 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


epistle ; that its truths therefore are themselves the culmin- 
ation of St Paul’s conception of the doctrine of Atonement 
in the Person of Christ. What then is that atoning power 
in us, which is, for us, the consummation of the Atonement? 
It is spoken of in the first verse as “being in Christ 
Jesus.” In the second verse it is described more fully as 
“the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ.” In the sixth 
verse it is “the mind of the Spirit.” In the ninth verse 
it is the indwelling of “the Spirit of God.” This and the 
two following verses make it absolutely clear that certain 
significant variations of phrase are not only, in fact, varia- 
tions without a difference of meaning, but that their identity 
is so obvious to the writer and to his readers, that it does 
not even need to be explicitly stated, but may be taken as 
of course. The varying phrases are “ The Spirit of God” — 
“the Spirit of Christ”—“ Christ ””"—* The Spirit of Him that 
raised up Jesus from the dead ”—* He that raised up Christ 
Jesus from the dead ... through His Spirit that dwelleth 
in you.” 

Could anything make clearer the absolute identity of the 
presence of Christ with the presence of the Spirit of Christ ? 
or the identity of the presence of the Spirit of Christ with 
the presence of the Spirit of God who raised up Christ? 
The passage goes on to speak further of this presence of 
the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of God, in three 
references ; (1) it is the realization of Sonship—“ whereby 
we cry Abba Father ” ;—it is partnership in the Sonship and 


1Compare Dr Sanday’s article, in the Dictionary of the Bible, on the 
word ‘* God,” p. 215¢. 

The passage Rom. viii. 9-11 runs consecutively thus; ‘But ye are not in 
the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. 
But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ 
is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of 
righteousness, But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead 
dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken 
also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” 

Compare also the transition (which is not a transition) in Eph. iii—from 
“ His Spirit” to ‘‘ Christ”; and again from ‘‘ knowing the love of Christ” to 








vitI.J THE HOLY SPIRIT 199 


inheritance of Christ;! (2) it is an effectual succour to 
infirmity, which is in part spoken of as intercession 
for us, while it is even more completely entreaty 
within us, of the full measure of which only He is 
cognizant who “ searcheth the hearts” and “ knoweth the 
mind of the Spirit” ;? and (3) it is an inseparable union 
of our very selves with the “love of Christ,” or, more fully, 
“the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”? The 
phrases of the passage will receive some further comment 
from the last seven verses of 1 Cor. ii, where (1) the 
Spirit is the Spirit of God, and is God; for the Spirit of 
God is to God as the spirit of a man to himself:* (2) this 
Spirit of God is the capacity, in men who are capable of 
it, of insight into all realities of spiritual truth: (3) this 
spiritual condition of Christians is to “have the mind of 
Christ.” ® 

It remains only to corroborate these conceptions of 
Pauline theology by glancing through the general epistle 
of St John. The very object with which this epistle is 
written is that its readers may quite fully realize what is 
realized with such wonderful vividness by St John himself, 
—that the meaning of life in Christ’s Church is personal 
fellowship with the Incarnate Christ, and therefore, no 
less, with the Eternal God. “Yea and our fellowship is 


being ‘‘ filled with all the fulness of God.” ‘‘ For this cause I bow my knees 
unto the Father, from whom every fatherhood (R.V. margin) in heaven and on 
earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, 
that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; 
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ; to the end that ye, being 
rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what 
is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God, 
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the 
Church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.” 
Eph. iii. 14-21. 

1 Rom. viii. 14-17. 4 Rom. viii. 26-27. 5 Rom. viii. 35-39. 

* : Cor. ii, 10-11. 5 1 Cor, ii. 12-15. 6 1 Cor, ii. 16. 


200 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP, 


with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”4 The : 


method of union with the Eternal, is union with the 
Incarnate. “We have beheld and bear witness that the 
Father hath’ sent the Son to be the Saviour of the 
world” 2“ Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath 
not the Father; he that confesseth the Son hath the 
Father also.” “If that which ye heard from the be- 
ginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son, and 
in the Father.”* “He that hath the Son hath the life; 
he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.”5 
“We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given 
us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, 
and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus 
Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”® It is, 
then, in primary reference (in this sense) to the Incarnate, 
that St John speaks of the ideal Christian life as knowing 
Him (“hereby know we that we know Him, if we keep 
His commandments” ’”), being or abiding in Him (“hereby 
know we that we are in Him; he that saith he abideth in 
Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked.”® .. . 
“ And now, my little children, abide in Him” ®): and insists 
upon the power of the indwelling One—“greater is He 
that is in you than he that is in the world,” and upon 
the absolute antithesis between that indwelling and sin, 
“Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever 
sinneth hath not seen Him, neither knoweth Him”™ , , 

“ whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because His 
seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is 
begotten of God.” Everything, then, turns upon the full 
recognition, in faith of mind and of heart, of the trans- 
cendent fact of Incarnation. “Who is he that overcometh 
the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of 


1y John i. 3. 21 John iv. 14. 3; John ii. 23. 
41 John ii. 24. 5 y John v. 12. ®t John v. 20. 
71 John ii. 3. 8 x John ii. 5-6. ® x John ii, 28. 
10; John iv. 4. 1 y John iii. 6. 12 y John iii. 9. 


Oa 





VIII. ] THE HOLY SPIRIT 3 201 


God?”+ To have such a belief is to have the internal 
witness to truth_—and its end is eternal life. “He that 
believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him”? .. . 
“these things have I written unto you that ye may know 
that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the 
Name of the Son of God.” 8 

This life is the actual presence of the Son (as above, 
“He that hath the Son hath the life”). This presence 
is spoken of as-“an anointing”: “The anointing which 
ye received of Him abideth in you. ... His anointing 
teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no 
lie.”* And the sure evidence of its reality is the animat- 
ing influence of its Spirit. “Hereby we know that He 
abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us.”5 And 
this Spirit is known to be the true Spirit,—as on the one 
side by its recognition and embrace of the Incarnation 
as the master-fact,—“ Hereby know ye the Spirit of God; 
every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in 
the flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not 
Jesus is not of God:”® so, on the other, by its manifest 
identity with the God who Himself “is love.” “He that 
loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.”’. . . “if we 
love one another, God abideth in us, and His love is 
perfected in us: hereby know we that we abide in Him, 
and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit.”*® 
This Spirit,—the certainty, nay the presence, of the In- 
carnation within us, is both truth, then, and love. “It is 
the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the 
truth.”® “He that saith I know Him and keepeth not 
His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him: 
but whoso keepeth His word, in him verily hath the love 
of God been perfected.” The manifestation of life withia 


1; John v. 5. 27 John v. 10. 3 John v. 13. 
*y John ii. 27. 5 y John iii, 24. $y John iv. 2, 3 
71 John iv. 8, 8 x John iv. 12, 13. ® 1 John v. 7. 


10y John ii. 4, 5. 


zoe ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY __ [cuar 


is love. “We know that we have passed out of death 
into life, because we love the brethren.”1 Reality of 
personal communion with the Eternal God, a result zpso 
facto necessarily following from reality of personal com- 
munion with Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son: and this, a 
communion in, and as, Spirit: a communion whereof at 
once the manifest evidence, and also the inner and essential 
reality, consist of identity of Spirit—the presence being 
the Spirit, and the Spirit manifesting the presence ;—a 
reality, then, of personal communion with the Spirit of 
the Incarnation,—the Spirit of Love, which is the Spirit 
of God revealed in Christ: this is the essential Creed of 
St John, the declaring of what, to his consciousness, 
Christian faith and life mean. 


The inquiry of the present chapter has been wholly 
undertaken as an attempt towards understanding, so far 
as it is possible for us to understand, the doctrine of God 
the Holy Ghost, as part of the total revelation of the 
Being of God. The things which have seemed to emerge 
from the inquiry may perhaps be summed up, in con- 
clusion, in the statement of the following general positions, 

I. The revelation of the Holy Trinity is a revelation 
wholly within, and based upon, the essential and indis- 
soluble unity of God. At the same time the eternal 
distinctions within the Unity of Divine Being involve such 
essential relation of mutuality, as cannot be adequately 
expressed by any word of less import than the word 
Personality or Person. Human analogies are important, 
and do serve, but serve only within narrow limits, towards 
the intellectual vindication and illustration of this doctrine. 
The analogy which will probably be most suggestive to 
many minds is that of (@) what a man is invisibly in 
himself, (4) his outward material projection or expression 
as body, and (c) the response which that which he is, 


1 x John iii. 14. 


hi 


a 











vm.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 203 


through its bodily utterance or operation, compels the 
things which are, or seem to be, outside him, to render 
back, as true echo or extension of himself. This response, 
even while we recognize it only as response, is not properly 
so much a fresh addition to himself, as a mirror of that 
which was really in himself before it found its expression 
from without as response. But however much we can, 
even intellectually, see that the doctrine is both true, and 
necessary to thought, yet nothing can make Tri-Personal 
mutuality fully or properly intelligible to uni-personal 
consciousness. 

II. Whatever other, or further, revelation might con- 
ceivably have been made of Them, as within the eternal 


relations of Divine existence, both the Person of God the 


Eternal Son, and the Person of God the Eternal Spirit, 
were, in fact, originally, and are principally, revealed to 
us in proportion as their revelation was necessary for the 
unfolding of the work of Divine Atonement in human life ; 
and are revealed moreover under titles which (whatever 
relation they may have to the more inaccessible mysteries 
of Divine Being) are at least most immediately suggestive 
of the actual character and operation of “God as Man” 
and of “God within Man” in the great complex fact (a 
fact at once historical and timeless) of Incarnation and 
Atonement. 

III. The Holy Ghost in particular is, to us, immediately, 
the Spirit of the Incarnate Christ, made, through the In- 
carnation, the Spirit of Man. Because He is the Spirit of 
the Incarnate, He is also, of necessity, no less, the Spirit 
of God. Because He was the Spirit of God, He could not 
but be the Spirit of the Incarnate. But, to us, He is the 
Spirit of God through, and as, being first, for us, the Spirit 
of the Christ. He is the Spirit of God; but of God, in 
particular, as sin-conquering in, and as, man. He could 
not be indeed the indwelling Spirit of victorious Humanity 


204 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


till Humanity had conquered. He could not be the 
indwelling Spirit of Human Holiness, till Humanity was 
veritably holy. But from the moment when Humanity 
triumphed in Holiness perfectly Divine, the Spirit of God 
was become, in the Person of Christ, the Spirit of Human 
Holiness victorious over sin. The Spirit of the Christ, 
then, is the Spirit, or Personal Character, or very Love, or 
real Spiritual Presence, of God,—expressed in creation, 
realized personally in man. And this Presence, in those 
who are capable of realising it personally, is the Presence 
of the Son and of the Father. 

To these three positions it may be convenient to add, 
in this place, a fourth, which has been indeed suggested in 
the things already said, but which remains to be still some- 
what more completely made good. 

IV. The Spirit of the Incarnate in us is not only our 
personal association, but our personal union, with the In- 
carnate Christ. To clothe the phrase for a moment in 
other language, He is the subjective realization within, 
and as, ourselves, of the Christ who was first manifested 
objectively and externally, for our contemplation and love, 
in Galilee and on the Cross. He is more and more, as the 
Christian consummation is approached, the Spirit within 
ourselves of Righteousness and Truth, of Life and of Love. 
He is more, indeed, than within us. He is the ultimate 
consummation of ourselves. He is the response, from us, 
of goodness and love, to the goodness and love of God. 
He is, with quite unreserved truth, when all is consum- 
mated, our own personal response. He is so none the less 
because He is also (and was, at first, in the way of dis- 
tinction and contrast,) the response which out of, and 
within, and as, ourselves, He Himself—not we—very 
gradually wrought. His presence in us is zs response 
in us, become ultimately ourselves: He is Christ Himself 
in us, become the Spirit which constitutes us what we 











m] | THE HOLY SPIRIT ~ 205 





re: and therefore, though in us,—though ultimately our- 
elves,—a response really worthy of God, really adequate 
sind a mirror, an echo, nay even a living presentment 


206 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


NOTE A (see page 172.) 


St Augustine on distinguishing the Persons of the Trinity in Terms 
of separate Qualities. 


It is only with a caution of this kind that we should use such a 
sentence as Hooker’s. [E.P. V. lvi. 5, p. 248.] “The Father as 
Goodness, the Son as Wisdom, the Holy Ghost as Power do all 
concur in every particular outwardly issuing from that one only 
glorious Deity which they all are. For that which moveth God to 
work is Goodness, and that which ordereth His work is Wisdom, and 
that which perfecteth His work is Power.” 

At the beginning of the sixth book of the De Tvinitate, St Augustine 
discusses the difficulty involved in such phrases. He quotes the 
argument which had been used against the Arians—“ If the Son of 
God is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and God was never 
without wisdom and power, it follows that the Son is co-eternal with 
the Father; for the apostle says ‘Christ the power of God and the 
wisdom of God,’ and since no one in his senses could say that God 
ever did not possess wisdom and power, therefore there was never a 
time when the Son was not.” And he points out at once that this 
reasoning involves the admission that God the Father is not Wisdom 
in Himself, but is only wise by virtue of always having His begotten 
Wisdom. Can you then say that the Son is “ Wisdom of Wisdom,” as 
you say that He is “ Light of Light,” if God the Father is not actually 
Wisdom, but is only the “ Father of Wisdom”? The question is argued, 
as a question of great difficulty, at considerable length, in the early 
part of the seventh book. The result may be represented by the 
following sentences, which explicitly recognize the Father as Wisdom, 
the Son as Wisdom, and the Holy Ghost as Wisdom; not as three 
Wisdoms, nor three instances of Wisdom ; but as each severally the 
same, single and absolute, Wisdom. Such a conclusion would certainly 
require a restatement of the Athanasian argument. 

“Quod si et Pater qui genuit sapientiam, ex ea fit sapiens, neque 
hoc est illi esse quod sapere, qualitas ejus est Filius, non proles ejus, 
et non ibi erit jam summa simplicitas. Sed absit ut ita sit: quia 
vere ibi est summe simplex essentia: hoc ergo est ibi esse quod 
sapere. Quod si hoc est ibi esse quod sapere, non per illam 
sapientiam quam genuit sapiens est Pater; alioquin non ipse illam 
sed illa eum genuit. Quid enim aliud dicimus, cum dicimus hoc 
illi est esse quod sapere, nisi eo est quo sapiens est? Quapropter 
quee causa illi est ut sapiens sit, ipsa illi causa est ut sit; proinde 
si sapientia quam genuit, causa illi est ut sapiens sit, etiam ut 





7 ae 





VIII] THE HOLY SPIRIT 207 


sit ipsa illi causa est. Quod fieri non potest.... Ergo et Pater 
ipse sapientia est; et ita dicitur Filius sapientia Patris, quomodo 
dicitur lumen Patris ; id est, ut quemadmodum lumen de lumine, et 
utrumque unum lumen, sic intelligatur sapientia de sapientia, et 
utrumque una sapientia: ergo et una essentia ; quia hoc est ibi esse 
quod sapere. Quod enim est sapientiz sapere, et potentize posse, et 
zeternitati zternam esse, justitiz justam esse, magnitudini magnam 
esse, hoc est essentiz ipsum esse. Et quia in illa simplicitate non est 
aliud sapere quam esse, eadem ibi sapientia est quze essentia.” .. . 

“Et ideo Christus virtus et sapientia Dei, quia de Patre virtute et 
sapientia etiam ipse virtus et sapientia est, sicut lumen de Patre 
lumine, et fons vite apud Deum Patrem utique fontem vite.” ... 
“Tumen ergo Pater, lumen Filius, lumen Spiritus Sanctus; simul 
autem non tria lumina, sed unum lumen. Et ideo sapientia Pater, 
sapientia Filius, sapientia Spiritus Sanctus; et simul non tres sapientiz, 
sed una sapientia ; et quia hoc est ibi esse quod sapere, una essentia 
Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Nec aliud est ibi esse quam 
Deum esse: unus ergo Deus Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.” 

A little later, after apologizing for the necessary inadequacy of the 
terms by which human language expresses this distinction in identity, 
(whether troordcess and ovcia, or persone and essentia or substantia), 
terms adopted “loquendi causa de ineffabilibus, ut fari aliquo modo 
possemus quod effari nullo modo possumus,” he finds some consola- 
tion in reflecting, “Verius enim cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et 
verius est quam cogitatur.” 


208 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


NOTE B (see fage 187.) 


On the question how far the title“ Son” is directly used of the Logos 
as pre-Incarnate; with special reference to Hippolytus against 
Noetus, and to Marcellus of Ancyra. 


I am grateful for the suggestion that what is said in the text may 
be thought to resemble the argument of Marcellus of Ancyra, as 
exhibited by Eusebius ; inasmuch as he claims “Son” as a title only 
of the Incarnate, and appeals to the Logos of St John as the one dis- 
tinctively pre-Incarnate title. 

The suggestion gives a natural opportunity for making clearer the 
meaning of what is said in the text, by emphasizing the contrast 
between it and the argument of Marcellus. 

But I am referred also to the refutation of Noetus by Hippolytus. 
And before coming to Marcellus, it will be useful to consider the 
bearing of the passages in which Hippolytus refers to the subject. 
Noetus, over-emphasizing, or rather wrongly emphasizing, the funda- 
mental unity of God, makes God uni-personal. He is therefore 
explicitly Patripassian. éby rdv Xpwrdv atrdv eivar tov Ilarépa, 
Kat avrov Tov Ilarépa yeyevrvyo Gan kat rerovOévan Kal droteOvnKévas, 
. . . & oty Xpicrdv dporoyd Oedv, airds dpa éoriv o Ilarip* « 
yap (al. <’ye) éoriv 6 Geds, Erabev 88 Xpurrds, avrds dv eds, dpa 
obv éxrabev Ilarip, Tlarip yap avros Hv. . . . dvaurytvrws éyovres, 
airés éore Xpurrds 6 Ilarip, airds Yids, adrds eyevvnOy, avrds 
érabev, avrds éavrov nyetpev. Hippol. c. Hzer. Noeti, ch. 1, 2, and 3. 
Hippolytus is equally clear, on his own side, about the unity of God, 
—but not at the expense of the Incarnation. Tis yap ovx épel eva 
Ocdv evar; GAN’ ov THV oikovopiav dvaipyoe, Ch. 3. Noetus would 
press such texts as “ Surely God is in thee” and “O God of Israel, the 
Saviour” (od yap 6 Qeds Tod ’IopanA cwrjp), Isaiah xlv. 14, 15, to 
mean the identity of the Incarnate with the Father. Against this 
Hippolytus, amongst other arguments, quotes John iii. 13, “No 
man hath ascended into Heaven, but He that descended out of 
Heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in Heaven,” as an asser- 
tion by the Incarnate of His own pre-existence. But the pre- 
existence of whom? Not of the flesh, Hippolytus answers, for that 
was assumed, at the Incarnation, of the virgin and the Spirit, to 
make the perfect offering of the Son of God; and till then there was 
no “flesh” in Heaven. It was the pre-existence, then, of the Adyos 
doapkos, the Logos not yet made flesh. It was the Logos who 
became Incarnate. He was flesh, was Spirit, was power; and He 
bore the gracious name of Son of Man by anticipation, because He 


om 





vill.) THE HOLY SPIRIT 209 


was to be man,—8ia 7d péddXov, Kaito. pjtw dv avOpwros—as in 
the vision of Daniel vii. 13. It was right then to say that He, as 
pre-existent in Heaven, was called from the beginning by this name, 
the Logos of God. Ibid., ch. iv. p. 57. 

In ch. xv. he anticipates that objection will be made to his using the 
word “Son” of the “Logos”; that is, apparently, to his using a 
personal title of the pre-existent, making Him, as “Son,” a distinct 
personality. The title used by St John is Logos ; and it seems to be 
argued (on the side of Noetus) that this title Logos is of the nature of 
a metaphor. It is, then, this metaphorical or impersonal interpreta- 
tion of Logos that Hippolytus is concerned to deny. It is, he seems 
to argue, a personal name, as in the vision of Him that “sat on a 
white horse” in Rey. xix. 11, “and His eyes are a flame of fire, and 
upon His head are many diadems ; and He hath a name written which 
no one knoweth but He Himself. And He is arrayed in a garment 
sprinkled with blood; and His name is called the Word of God.” 
The garment sprinkled with blood is His flesh which He offered in the 
passion. Thus the Person is He of whom St Paul speaks in Rom. 
viii. 3. “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Who was 
this “Son” but the “ Word,” whom He called “Son” because He was 
to be born—év Yidv rpoonydpeve Sid 7d pedrewv adrov yevéer Oar! 
It was in love towards man that He bore this title, and was called 
the “Son.” For the Logos, as Logos, not being yet Incarnate, was 
not in the full sense “Son,” though He was, in the full sense, the 
“Logos only begotten”; nor had His flesh any subsistence in §itself, 
apart from the Logos, because the flesh subsisted only in the Logos. 
It was thus, then, that He was manifested, in completeness, as the One 
Son of God. Oire yap dcapKos kal kal’ éavrdv 6 Adyes TéAevos Hv 
Yids, xairot réAevos Adyos dv povoyenvijs, ovf 4 odpE Kal? EavTiy 
Sixa tod Adyov trogriva: ndivaro, dia 75 ev Adyy thy cbotacw 


_ ev’ otras odv efs Vids réAevos Oeot EfavepdOn: ch. xv. p. 73. 








Verbally, then, Hippolytus appears to assert that the word “Son,” 
in the fullest sense, belongs only to the Incarnate, as born in the 
_ world; and though he says that the word was used before by anticipa- 
tion, he does not apparently recognize amy sense in which the word 
_ could be used rightly, except by anticipation, of the pre-Incarnate 
_ Logos. That he should take this position is the more remarkable, 
because he is, at the very moment, engaged in vindicating his own 
right to use the word “Son,” in some way, of the Logos before 
Incarnation ; and because he claims without reserve to call the Logos 
_ “only begotten,” which would certainly seem to give some proper 
_ content of meaning to the word “Son.” 

But whatever may have been, in the case of Hippolytus, the motive 
or the significance of language like this, it is quite clear, if not what 


210 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


Marcellus meant, yet at all events what he was understood by others | 


to mean, by insisting on calling the pre-Incarnate exclusively Logos, 
and denying the title “ Son.” 

It would be, indeed, beside the present purpose to raise any subtler 
question as to the meaning of Marcellus himself. If there is ground 
for doubting whether he has been truly interpreted, this is not the 
place to examine it. It is only with Marcellus as represented to us, 
that we are here concerned. 

Marcellus, then, we are told, like Noetus, so emphasized the unity 
of God as to make Him uni-personal. It is precisely because he 
explains Logos impersonally, that he does not mind allowing the pre- 
existence of the Logos of God. He understands Logos in God 
exactly as he understands logos in man, that is, as in no way distinct 
from the man himself. It zs the man,—in a certain aspect or activity. 
So then “God,” before the creation, was solitary. pajrw Tov Kdopov 
yeyovoros ovder érepov Hv rAjjv Ocod pdvov, The Logos was His utter- 
ance, inseparable, as such, from His personality. This can be readily 
understood from a little consideration of ourselves. Ovde yap rov 
Tov avOpwrov Adyov Svvape Kal troordae xwpica Twi Sivarov. 
“Ev ydp éore kal radrov To avOpdarw 6 Adyos, Kal ovdevi ywpiCouevos 
ETEpw 7) HOVN TH THS Mpa&ews évepyeia. Euseb., de Eccl. Theol., 1. xvii., 
p. 860. 

This, as Eusebius urges, isflatSabellianism. Sabellius and Marcellus 
equally, he says, make the Father and the Logos identical; the only 
difference being that Sabellius had not the audacity to measure Logos 
in God by logos in man, nor the folly to describe as “Son of God” a 
Logos who had no substantive existence,—ovs’ otrws 7AiOvos Hv as 
Tov py Vpertata Adyov vidv Ocod dvaxaAeiv, According to this view 
the phrase “let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” is only 
like the word of a man who should talk to, or encourage, himself. 
But all this Marcellus does in the name of unity ; as though unity 
were not equally real to us (Catholic Christians) who affirm the 
eternal generation of the Son, and that He was “Son” and not 
“Logos” only, from all eternity—os ody? kal juav TovTo AeydvTwv, TOV 
Yidv tod Oeod ddAnOds civar Yidv rapadede[t]ypévwv, map’ avrovd 
Te pepuabnkdtrwov eva yvwpilev Ocdv, avrov Te eivar Oedv opod Kat 
Ilarépa Yiot rot povoyevots, EavTovd dnradi dvtos dAnOGs Yiod 
Tpd ravrwv aiwvav ef avrovd yeyevnuéevov, kai od povov Adyov KexAn- 


pévov mpd THs avadjpews THS TapKds. Ib., p. 861. 


It is, then, in the interest of this denial of the Personality of the © 
Son, that Marcellus insists that only the name Logos is predicable — 
before the Incarnation, and “Son” only asa result of Incarnation. It — 
is for this that he makes appeal to the opening verses of St John ; — 


and denies that the pre-incarnate Logos is ever called Son except 


prophetically, by anticipation. odxotv mpd pév Tod KareAOelv Kal dia 


= 


‘ 
f 


ot 
‘ 
“i 


Pp ee en ee ee ae ee ee 


Na rr ied xo 








Viit.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 211 


Ths mapGevov Tex Pjjvae Adyos 7) mV povov.... ™ por Epov Yep; domrep 
moARovddé nvp SyuKev erepov nv 1 Adyos. .. + Opev yap Adyos ev 
dpxy) nV, pndev & ETepov dv 7 Adyos* 6 dé TO Ady evodels dvOpwros, | 
ovK Ov Tporepov yeyovev dv Opurros, ws SiSdoKer 1 npav "Iwdvvns, Kai 6 6 

Adyos dps eyéeveTo, Ava TOUTO Toivuy TOU Adyou pynpovebwv 
paiverat povov. Hire yap "Inoov, <ire Xpurrov 6 dvdparos pevnpovevot 
» Oeia ypapn, TOV PETA THS dvOpumivov 6 ovTa capKos Tov Ocov Aédyov 
Ovopdferv gaiverar. Hi S€ tis Kat mpd THs Neds Avadjxns Tod 
Xpwrrov [7 700] Yiot ovopo, T® Ady _ povy Sexxvivas Sivacbat 
erayyeAXoiTo, eipjoe TOUTO TpopnTiKOs cipynpuévov. ch. xviii. p. 864. 

It is plain, then, from these quotations (1) that Marcellus (if rightly 
represented) denied the title Son to the Incarnate quite absolutely, with- 
out reserve of any kind ; and (2) that he intended, in this denial, to deny 
any personal pre-existence at all. Precisely because he understood it 
as impersonal, he desired to make exclusive use of the title Logos. 
And it is correspondingly plain that, to the mind of Eusebius, the 
assertion that the Adyos was also from all eternity Yids, is the 
method of insisting, and is valued so earnestly just Jdecause it is the 
method of insisting, that the Adyos was, before Incarnation, not 
only existent, but also existent as a@ Person. The real issue between 
them is the Personality of the Son; and therefore the doctrine of the 
Trinity of God. 

But however remote, for these reasons, the position attributed to 
Marcellus may be from what any modern Christian, who intends to 
be orthodox, could hold; it may still not improbably be felt that the 
position stated by Eusebius is, if fully accepted, conclusive not only 
against the doctrine of Marcellus with whom he was arguing ; but 
against a good deal besides, though it may have but little in common 
with Marcellus ; against, for instance, the suggestion made in the text. 
For to him the “Eternal Generation ” of the Son, the eternal existence 
of the Son as “Son,” is in itself a positive and a fundamental principle. 
Is this consistent with the suggestion in the text? I must answer that 
I do not think it is inconsistent, so long as the Eusebian principle is 
itself urged with reverent reserve, that is, without an undue crudeness 
_ of emphasis upon those elements in it which we least understand. 

, Let me raise the question in this form. What is, so far as is re- 
_ vealed to us, the relation between the First, and Second, Persons of 

the Blessed Trinity? and how completely is it expressed by the 

_ mutual words “Father” and “Son”? Now the two most extreme 


_ answers to this question, in the opposite directions, would be, as I con- 








ceive, these. On the one side it would be answered,—These words 
_ “Father” and “Son” have no application at all to the eternal relation 
within Deity. It is only improperly, by a sort of liberty, or extension 
_ Of speech, that they are used of pre-Incarnate existence. Properly 

_ Speaking they belong to the Incarnation, and to that quite exclusively 


212 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


and alone. The extreme answer on the other side would be,— 
The eternal relation within Deity is exactly, and properly, defined by 
the words “ Father” and “Son.” It wasin order to reveal the eternal 
relations that the words were chosen. It is to the eternal relations 
that they are primarily applicable. Of the eternal relations they are 
(whether intelligible or not) the authoritative revelation. Any 
application to the Incarnation or its effects, though that also may be 
true, is at most quite secondary and subordinate as interpretation of 
the terms. 

The first of these answers might be made in two, widely differing, 
forms. It might be made by those who denied the personal pre- 
existence of the Son (under whatever title) and the truth of the 
Trinitarian doctrine altogether. This is the unhesitating position of 
Marcellus, as Eusebius understands him. But it might also be made, 
more innocently, by those who, having no doubt of the eternal pre- 
existence of the Personal Logos, yet thought that He could be called by 
the title “Son” omy in reference to His coming Incarnation. This is 
the position which is, at one point, to say the least, very nearly adopted 
by Hippolytus. 

But the suggestion made in the text is wholly distinct from the 
first answer, in either of its two forms. Only, whilst explicitly re- 
pudiating either form of the first, it does suggest that the other answer 
goes too far in the opposite direction, and that there is a considerable 
region of intermediate ground between the two. It does suggest that 
the reserve which would shrink from adopting outright the phrases of the 
answer at the other extreme, would be a reverent and a wise reserve. 

It is possible to accept the words “ Father” and “ Son” as being 
sufficiently, for us, in harmony with that truth of the eternal relation 
within Deity which we are little capable of understanding, without 
supposing that they were revealed, either exclusively, or even primarily, 
in reference to those eternal relations with which they so correspond. 
It is possible, on this view, to accept and to value as an approxima- 
tion to truth, all that theologians have ever said about the eternal 
generation of the Son ; and yet not to press it forward with dogmatic 
insistence, as though it belonged to a region in which we could either 
speak, or think, with confidence. It is reverent, after all, to remind 
ourselves of the necessary limitation of our thought ; and to realize 
how little way we are capable of going towards putting a positive con- 
tent of meaning into such a phrase as “eternal generation,” however 
valuable, in some contexts, it may be both to use, and to explain, the 
phrase. 

We are not at all concerned to make a point of denying that the 
word “Son” is predicated of the Pre-existent in His eternal relations ; 


far less to deny that it is capable of being so predicated: though, as — 
to the fact, we may be allowed to feel some doubt whether it is, in the — 


et aeeecaee a 














vir] THE HOLY SPIRIT 213 


scripture, so predicated in any unequivocal manner. What we do 
suggest amounts rather to this, that, as far as nomenclature is con- 
cerned, the words “Father” and “Son” express most primarily and 
most unreservedly the relation between the Eternal and the Incarnate, 
between God as God and God as man; and analogously rather than 
primarily, in dim suggestion rather than directly, those eternal re- 
lations which are hardly capable of any other than an indirect and 
analogous expression. If ever, then, they are used expressly of the 
eternal relations between the Persons of the Trinity, their application 
is, at all events, so far less direct and more mysterious, that they have 
to be interpreted, with reservation, guardedly ; because as applied to 
that existence, the words, though not inapplicable or untrue, are yet 
applicable only through reserves which are not easy to human thought, 
but without which they inevitably tend to convey, to human thought, 
what is other, and more, than the truth. 

To put it in another way, it may be said that what we suggest is that 
the title “‘ Son,” as direct revelation of unreserved or intelligible truth, 
begins, so to speak, from the Incarnate side, though capable—more, 
or less—of being transferred therefrom to that eternal relation of 
which Incarnation was itself a consequence: rather than that it is 
primarily revealed of the eternal relation,—though transferable also 
from the Divine to the Human life. 

As to the question of fact, it is very difficult to be certain how far the 
word “Son” is used directly in Scripture of the pre-Incarnate Logos as 
such. I have already suggested in the text what seem to me reasonable 
grounds for doubting whether, in the great Baptismal formula, which 
is supremely authoritative, “into the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” the reference is so much -to the pre- 
existent Logos, as to the Incarnate who had triumphed once for all 
in man, 

So again in such a passage as the opening of the Hebrews, when 
we read “God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets ... hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in [His] 
Son,” it is impossible to doubt, so far, that the word “Son” suggests 
primarily the Incarnate, as Jucarnate. And when the writer goes on 
“whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made 
the worlds: who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image 
_ of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power,’ 
we shall hardly feel that these assertions alter the primary reference 
of the word “Son” as it stood in the verse before. All these things are 
true of Him, the Incarnate, though not true of Him primarily as In- 
_ carnate. If then they are all in this passage predicated of the Incarnate 
Son, it is difficult to lay down that they are, in this passage, predicated 
of Him primarily as Son, any more than they are of Him primarily as 
Incarnate. 


214 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. | 


The same is true of Col. i. 13, etc. “Who... translated us into 
the kingdom of the Son of His love; in whom we have our redemp- 
ion, the forgiveness of our sins: who is the image of the invisible 
God, the firstborn of all creation, for in Him were all things created,” 
etc. Here the first two clauses so clearly refer to the victory wrought 
on earth by the Incarnate, that when the later clauses go on to 
predicate of Him eternal Deity, the work of Creation, etc., it seems 
impossible to say that these things are, as far as the passage is con- 
cerned, predicated of the Son, in any other sense than that in which 
they are predicated of the Incarnate. They are predicated indeed of 
Him the Incarnate, yet not primarily of His Incarnation ; and there- 
fore also of Him the Son, yet (it may be) not of Him most primarily 
or directly in respect of the title “Son.” 

As to any words uttered, of Himself, by the lips of the Incarnate,— 
“the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father 
doing ”—“ I and the Father are one”—“ the Father loveth the Son, and 
hath given all things into His hand”—“ Believe Me that I am in the 


Father, and the Father in Me,” etc. etc.—it is manifest that they cannot | 


be so taken apart from what He was who uttered them, and when He 
uttered them, as to warrant our laying down that they, or any of them, 
ought to be interpreted primarily, without any reference to the In- 
carnation at all, of His eternal pre-existence. 

But though, in one passage after another, it seems impossible to get 
rid of this uncertainty of exegesis ; and though (in spite of any misuse 
which Marcellus may have tried to make of it) the fact remains that the 
only passage in the New Testament which goes wholly and obviously 
behind the fact of Incarnation, drops altogether the words “ Father” 
and “Son”; I must repeat that it is not meant to be suggested that 
the words should in such sense be referred to the Incarnation only, as 
though there were, in the Eternal Being of Deity, no truth corre- 
sponding with them. 

We are not capable of understanding much, in direct terms, about 
the eternal relations within the Being of Deity. Only if we were 
capable of this, should we really understand with any fulness, that 
essential relation borne by the Logos who “in the beginning was with 
God, and was God,” “in whom were all things created,” and “in 
whom all things consist,” to creation, and in particular to humanity, 
which underlies the fact that it was the “ Logos” who “ became flesh” 
for the regeneration of man. And in understanding this it is possible 
that we might understand, a little more, what is that eternal relation 
between the Logos, who (being God) “was with God,” and “God” 
with whom the Logos (who was God) was; that relation which is 
shadowed for us to some extent under the metaphor of eternal genera- 
tion ; and to which the “ Filial” relation, which Incarnation made, 


Sy} 27 


se 


a 


Se 


mas 

















ta ae. ‘ ee 
fg! ed > - 


vilI.] THE HOLY SPIRIT 215 


to our earthly power of conceiving, absolute and literal, does, in some 
dimmer and more mysterious way, eternally correspond. 

I have desired to make it plain that the suggestion made in the text 
does not really set aside, or deny, anything whatever which has been 
asserted, whether by Eusebius or others, as a part of the Catholic 
faith. Its point is not denying or setting aside at all. It does not con- 
tradict, it is not inconsistent with, anything which has been really held 
or taught on these subjects. Its real point is positive not negative: 
what it is anxious to assert, not what it might have been supposed to 
disallow. And I cannot but believe that that positive meaning is both 
true and important: that positive thought which would find—in the 
mode of the revelation to men of God “the Son,” and God “ the Holy 
Ghost,” and in the terms and titles under which it has pleased God to 
designate to us the Father in relation to the Son, and the Son in 
relation to the Father, and the Holy Spirit in relation to both—a 
reference primary and dominant, though not therefore simply ex- 
clusive, to the One all-dominating fact of the Incarnation of God; 
God adove, and with, and as, and more and more within, man. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE HOLY SPIRIT IN RELATION TO HUMAN 
PERSONALITY 


THERE is now another side on which it is important for 
us to consider the meaning, to ourselves, of the doctrine 
of the Holy Ghost; in its relation, namely, to our own 
personal being. What is human personality? And what 
is the relation of the new Presence or Power, revealed 
within man at Pentecost, to the realization of man’s own 
personality, the true consummation of himself? 

It has been a natural and deep-rooted instinct, on the 
part of thinking man, not only to start all speculation, or 
apprehension, from himself,—which is his inevitable and 
only mode of access to wider truth: but in such wise to 
start from himself, as if he himself were, by himself, a 
complete and separate whole, a realization in full of what 
he meant, or needed to mean, by the word personality: 
and therefore also a measure by which to gauge the 
meaning of the word personality, wherever it was to be 
predicated of any other than himself. Whether he had, 
in fact, or how far he had, or had not, achieved the 
completeness of what personality meant, was a question 
which he hardly paused, or thought it necessary, to raise. 
That he at least was, anyhow, himself, was a natural 
assumption to make; and it was naturally made, without 
adequate scrutiny, as a basis of all further thought. The 


assumption that I am, anyhow, myself, passes almost 
216 


— oe) 


None ge, ly a ‘a Lois a 
ns ER See 








CHAP, IX.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 217 


indistinguishably, into the assumption that whatever this 
“JT” may do or suffer, on the right hand or the left, the “I” 
itself remains a fixed and permanent quantity, of one 
continuous and essential content and significance. 

This assumption that human personality was already 
fully realized, and therefore remained as an unchanging 
entity in the midst of all that was done by it, round it, 
or for it, has conspicuously underlain the greater part of 
human speculation in respect of the doctrine of the 
Atonement. It is suggested by the familiar metaphors 
under which different aspects of the Atonement have been 
illustrated, from the time of the New Testament itself. 
Man with a load upon him, or released from his load: 
man captive or enslaved, or released from his slavery or 
captivity: man sick or recovered from sickness ; is after all 
the same man. Through all propositions like these, he, the 
central subject, is unchanged. There is indeed, very much 
alteration in his conditions and well-being. But parables 
such as these, however suggestive in their way, certainly 
do not suggest that the essential heart of the great change 
is to be found, after all, in the altered content of the mean- 
ing of the man’s central self. The assumption that the 
human “he” was unchanged and undeveloped, because he 
had been, as “he,” complete from the first, has led specula- 
tive thought to try and find the very heart of the meaning of 
the great change wrought by atonement, in some direction 
external to, and independent of, the personality of the 
man redeemed. Hence it is that most Christian theories 
explanatory of atonement,—assuming on the one side 
that “man” was, through all, the same completed and 
unchanging entity, and that the work of atonement on 
_ the other hand, if explained at all, must be explained as 
a process complete in itself, before its completed process 
was brought into relation with the personalities of men; 
have in them, as explanations, a dangerous flaw. They all 


218 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


tend to be different forms of what the thought of the 
present day would sum up as the “transactional” theory 
of the atonement: and (whatever spiritual value they may 
have had in their time) it is certainly true that no theories 
of atonement which try to explain the whole meaning of 
it as a transaction completed, as transaction, outside the 
personalities of the redeemed, can state, with any adequacy, 
that aspect of the truth to which the consciousness of the 
present day is most keenly—and rightly—alive. 

It can hardly be denied that a fallacy of this sort is 
discernible—not indeed in apostolic or sub-apostolic 
references to atonement, which do not attempt to explain 
the transcendent fact in logical terms; but in the great 
majority of later attempts to give some philosophical 
definition of the method by which the consequences 
of atonement were reached. It was so in the curious 
suggestions which crop up in patristic expositions,—the 
payment to the devil, the outwitting of the devil, the 
justification of a Divine ruse, and so forth. 

It was so, most eminently, through every line of the 
elaborate treatise of Anselm, which, with whatever soften- 
ing of earlier repulsiveness of current and vulgar thought, 
still reduces everything to a strictly mathematical calculation, 
of the equation kind,—a calculation in which the human 
personality remains a fixed quantity throughout. And it 
is not too much to say that the same kind of fallacy is, in 
large measure, reproduced in most of the characteristic 
expositions of the rationale of atonement, which have been 
suggested from St Anselm’s time to our own. Indeed it 
could hardly have been otherwise with theories of atonement 
which were formulated upon a conception of personality 
so inadequate as that which is common to the majority of — 
writers on the subject. It is upon an inadequate © 
conception of personality that they are based: and it © 
is from a conception of personality more adequate to | 





ee, a 








1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 219 


the reality of experience, that they will receive their 
correction. 

It would of course be unfair to imply that such a view 
of personality as is here demurred to was any peculiarity 
of theologians speculating upon the rationale of atonement. 
It was rather a sort of tacit assumption, a general 
common-place, with which thought in all directions began ; 
and which philosophy had not so much invented, as failed 
to correct. 

What then is personality? In what sense can we be 
said to be possessed of it? or what relation has that with 
which we start, and which we call personality, to what we 
ourselves all the while mean, and cannot but really mean, 
by personality? Or where, or how, would the reality of 
personality, according to its own inherent necessities of 
meaning, find its actual consummation at last? It is 
indeed within ourselves that we find our own witness to 
what personality means, and if we did not first feel it 
there, we could not recognize it anywhere. Nevertheless 
if we try to analyze the things which we ourselves, by the 
witness which is from ourselves, must mean by personality: 
we shall be compelled to own, on consideration, that 
though the idea, as idea, of every one of them is forced 
upon our consciousness by what we ourselves are, yet not 
one of them is actually realized within our consciousness, 

It will be worth our while to examine this statement, in 
rather more detail, in respect of three conceptions, or pre- 
rogatives, of personal being: the three which probably 
occur with most directness to the minds of most of us, 
when we attempt, by any further analysis, either to vindi- 
cate our claim to the possession of real personality, or to 
explain what it is that we mean by it: in respect, that 
is to say, of our supposed possession—first of free will; 
secondly of reason or wisdom; and thirdly of the divine 
faculty of love. 


220 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


What is free will? How far do we possess it? or when, 
or how, would it reach its true consummation within us? 
We are entirely accustomed to claims, on the one side 
(based partly on speculative grounds, and still more on 
grounds of practical common sense,) to a complete reality 
of free will in man: and on the other side, to an array of 
proof, mainly theoretical, but at least of great logical 
strength, to show that man has no free will at all. Neither 
of these positions is absolutely true. There is always some 
truth represented in the other. Each begins to be 
positively false, when it tries to exclude the truth which 
the other represents ; but in its positive effort, each sees a 
real aspect of truth. 

We have got within us something which is akin to free 
will ; and which we must both call, and treat as, free will. 
We have the germ or inchoate capacity of free will; we 
have the clear instinct of having it; we have the inherent 
assumption of it as the basis of moral life; we are our- 
selves a witness to the idea of it, and our own imperative 
demand for its realization in ourselves. Yet our will is not, 
in fact, free. So completely are we ourselves a witness to 
the idea of it, that we cannot but out of ourselves construct 
the ideal which nevertheless is not there. We cannot but 
conceive of free will, and believe in the ideal reality of it, 
and posit it as a necessary assumption, in any intelligent 
conception of Supreme Being; because, without it, the 
things which visibly are, the fundamental significance of 
ourselves, would fall into chaos, 

But where did we find the conception of free will? 
Have we got free will in ourselves? Take the most homely 
of instances. Why does the slothful man not get up in 
the morning? Why does the intemperate man not give 
up his intemperance? Why does the ill-tempered man 
not make himself pleasanter, as to others, so to himself? In 
each case it is probable enough that the man has resolved 











1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 221 


to do so. He wishes, perhaps with exceeding strength of 
desire, to fulfil his resolves. Yet he does not—nay he feels, 
with a sadness only too well justified, that he cannot—do so. 
Why can he not? Nothing in the world prevents him—but 
himself. Everything, everybody, would heartily welcome 
his resolve, and encourage him to keep it. Yet he does not 
and cannot act upon it. Why not? Nothing whatever 
interferes with him. Hecould do it in a moment,—nay, 
he would do it with infallible certainty,—the very moment 
that he really willed to doit. But he cannot will to do it. 
He cannot will to do even what he wishes to will. Nothing 
in the world constrains him but his own inherent incapacity of 
willing, Do we call this free will? 

Take the case of the man who is just indolent and 
cowardly, and has shaped himself now into the inveterate 
habit, and has woven the inveterate habit into his character, 
of indolently not doing. The time comes when every- 
thing turns upon his power of intense concentration of 
purpose. He greatly desires to be strong; but he cannot. 
The concentration of will, which is the one thing required, 
is beyond the capacity of his will. And so with not a few 
of the most obvious resolutions, or experiences, which 
belong to the spiritual life. He longs, on this side, to do. 
He longs, on that side, to abstain from doing. In either 
case he is, as the world says, free. Nothing in the world 
interferes to overrule him. But what he would not do, he 
does. And when he would refrain, he can not. It was all 
mirrored for us, long ago, in the 7th chapter to the Romans, 
But once more, do we call this—our familiar experience— 
free will? St Paul called it rather “the body of this 
death.” 

It is clear that this will is not free. But what is our 
idea of free will? The first instinctive conception of free 
will, and one which has shaped too much of the current 
language about it, is probably this, that free will means 


222 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


an inherent capacity of equal choice between two alterna- 
tives, the power to do equally either a or 0. Now, great 
as the part undoubtedly is which has been played by such 
a conception as this, it is easy to see that this is quite 
fallacious. Unless @ and @ happen to be precisely equal 
in goodness, and also in wisdom, unless, that is to say, 
upon the improbable and unimportant hypothesis of an 
alternative which really is absolutely indifferent from every 
point of view whatever, no man of any growth in wisdom 
or character can egually do a or 8, 

The more moral he is, and the more wise, the less will 
a man be able todo Jd; perhaps the more immoral he is 
and unwise, the less will it be possible for him to do a. 
But in either case, his oscillation of purpose, if he oscillates, 
depends upon the fact that he is not, as yet, either 
absolutely of one kind, or absolutely of another. He is 
still, in some part, both. The real consummation of either 
moral or immoral character would exclude ambiguity,— 
the ambiguity which was offered as the criterion of free 
will, But the condition of double-mindedness is really 
characteristic of the sinner, rather than of the saint. 
It is to be observed moreover that if this conception of 
free will were true, then it would follow that of all that 
ever lived on this earth as man, absolutely the least free 
of will was the Lord Jesus Christ. If this were what 
free will meant, then there could be no element of free 
will, in the moral region at least, in the Person of Christ 
or of God. So plain does it become, on a very little 
thought, that this conception of free will is really suggested, 
not out of our experience of the reality, but rather out of 
our intimacy with the disease, or caricature, of free will. 
It is something, known indeed to us, but characteristic of 
will in a stage that is very far from free, from which so 
untenable a conception has been derived. 

This is at least equally plain when @ and 0 are avowedly 





28 ak 








IX.) HUMAN PERSONALITY 223 


made to represent what is right, and what is wrong. 
Equal capacity of doing right or doing wrong, whatever 
else it may be is not free will. Full power to sin is not 
the key to freedom! On the contrary, all inherent power 
to do wrong is a direct infringement of the reality of 
free will. It is indeed too true that our exceedingly 
imperfect free will has landed us in sin: and it is not 
altogether strange if the connection between what we 
currently call freedom, and capacity of sinning, appeared 
to be so absolutely direct, that men took capacity of 
sinning as itself the differentia of freedom. But the 
thought of saints, and above all of Christ and of God, 
is enough to show in a moment, that there has been some 
fallacy: and that, whatever sort of relation there may 
possibly be between freedom and power to sin, to make 
the one mean the other must be utterly wrong. In point 
of fact, if our imperfect freedom is directly connected 
with experience of sin; that with which the experience 
of sin is so closely bound up, is not really (as men have 
thought) the prerogative of freedom, but the exceeding 
imperfectness of the prerogative as realized in us. A 
demi-semi-freedom may lead to consequences—themselves 
in such sort of perverse affinity with the nobleness of 
personality that they would be impossible to the wholly 
impersonal and unfree—which nevertheless are the extreme 
antithesis of the consequences” properly belonging to 
perfect freedom. Freedom perverted is a more serious 
antithesis to the true meaning of freedom, than is that 
which has no element of freedom about it at all. An evil 
person is more opposite to a good person, than is that 
which is capable neither of evil nor good. 

If, then, a definition of free will, which is so quickly 
exposed by its consequences, may be certainly dismissed 
let us try an alternative definition, thus; Free will is the 


: power of so doing the things which we do, whatever their 


224 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


character, that when we do them they are really our own; 
and our own selves are really expressed in the doing of 
them. This is a conception very much nearer to the 
truth than the former one. It is at least beginning to 
look in the right direction. The essentia of free will 
is not at all to be found in the direction of a vacant 
uncertainty as to what we may happen to do: but it is 
to be found in the depth of the reality with which our 
acts when we do them,—our will movements when we 
really exercise will,—are personally our very own: at 
once the true outcome, and the true building-up, of 
ourselves, This does touch the heart of the real difference 
between animate and inanimate, between personal and 
impersonal, service. The impersonal and inanimate may 
indeed, and do, correspond with deliberate and conscious 
purpose. But the act of will, the rationale of action, is 
not in themselves. These are in a person indeed: for acts 
of will, and rationale of action are personal attributes: 
but they are not in the inanimate, which blindly obeys, 
and is not self-identified with them. But the freedom 
of a person is measured by the completeness of his 
own self-identification with his own acts and will; the 
completeness with which, howsoever or whencesoever they 
may have been presented to him, he has himself identified 
himself with them, he has become their direct and 
adequate cause, and they are the real effect, and outcome, 
of himself. 

But can we leave the definition in this form, and make 
free will consist of this capacity of personal identification 
with our actions, whatever the character of these actions of 
will may be? Is it, in anything like its true completeness, 
really irrespective of the character of the things done 
or willed: or, to put it in another form, irrespective of the 
question whether the person, in whom it is, is correspond- 
ing with, or is contradicting, the proper conditions and 











1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 225 


nature of his own capacities? Is the capacity of making 
personally my very own the things which belong to 
the highest ideal of my nature, and expanding both it and 
myself by growing on into them, and through them 
becoming more and more divinely myself: is this really 
on exactly the same level, as free will, with the perverse 
and disastrous possibility of so transgressing and pro- 
faning my nature, that I become more and more enslaved 
to the things which are the ruin of it, and see all its 
highest (which are also its truest) prerogatives and 
possibilities ebbing fatally away before my eyes? The one 
alternative is the gradual diminution and enslavement of 
the self, and all that the self was made, as a self, to become. 
The other is the gradual enlargement of the capacities of 
selfhood, the emancipation from disability, the perfecting of 
power, till, under conditions as transfiguring as the visible 
glory of the holy mountain, the self, in its own transcen- 
dent consummation, finds at last what it meant, in God’s 
truth, to be a self. Are these two contrasted alternatives 
to be said to be, after all, on the very same level, regarded 
as expositions illustrative of the true significance of 
free will? 

If not, we reach an amended definition of free will : 
which will now be described as man’s power of becoming a 
veritable cause to himself, in making personally his own, 
_ and being wholly self-identified with, such acts of will as 
themselves are in perfect accordance with, and are therefore 
: the true experience and development of, the nature which 
_ is essentially and properly his own. 
| The very faculty of free will, whatever its perversion 

may be, is itself Divine in quality, and man himself was 
made in the image of God. Only a true correspondence 
with the image of God is man’s true nature, or can be the 
realization of his faculties in full. The free will, then, with 
which God has endowed me is my possibility of making 
. P 


226 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cxar. 


personally my very own, by a progressive consecration of 
will, the things which belong to the highest consummation 
of the divinest capacities in me,—my own best and truest 
self. In other words my free will means the capacity 
in me of a perfect response, of personal will and personal 
character, to God. So far as I have attained this, I have 
attained the real freedom of the will. So far as I have still 
any germ or possibility of this, I have the possibility and 
germ of free will. So far as I have lost the possibility 
of this, I have lost the possibility of free will. Free will is 
not the independence of the creature, but is rather his self- 
realization in perfect dependence. Freedom is self-identity 
with goodness. Both goodness and freedom are, in their 
perfectness, in God. Goodness in a creature is—not 
distinction from, but correspondence with, the goodness of 
God. Freedom in a creature is correspondence with God’s 
own self-identity with goodness. If excellence, in an 
impersonal creature, is correspondence with God: in 
a personal creature it is still correspondence, but in a 
personal sense ; that is, it is a conscious echo, or response, 
mirroring, in will and character, the very character and will 
of God. It does not hinge upon the retention in man 
of the power to do wrong, but is consummated, rather, 
in the power to do perfectly right; and not only to do 
what in fact is perfectly right ; but therein to do perfectly — 
as his own what is his own perfectness ; to be a true cause 
at last, of his own consummation ; and therein to attain — 
and to realize the divine meaning of manhood, the true — 
essentia of created personality ; in a word to realize and to” 
find “himself.” It is man’s power to do perfectly, and 
perfectly as his own, that which is his own perfectness, in 
other words, that which reflects God, and is, in truth, God 
in him. y 

Does man possess, or can he have, such a power? It | 
is only indeed in proportion as he has it, in greater degree 














1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 227 


or in less, that he really has, in greater degree or in less, the 
real truth, as opposed to the caricature, of free will? But 
definition apart, has he got it, or can he have it? The 
answer is obvious. He has it just exactly in proportion 
as he is in Christ, and the Spirit of Christ is in him. He 
has it just in proportion—not to his independence but to 
his dependence: not to his sundered and lonely separation 
by himself, but to his communion with the Manhood 
which is perfected in Christ: not in proportion as he tries 
to realize his own personality by distinction from all others, 
but in proportion as he realizes it by surrender of his 
poor naked and several self to union with Another ;— 
Another, who indeed both is, and must be, first seen, and 
loved, and worshipped, and clung to, as Another; but 
Another who is, after all, his own crown and perfectness ; 
and who has wrought, and is come, not only to be either 
near, or even within,—but more and more perfectly to 
constitute, and actually to be, in the absolute unity of 
loving will, the very spirit and meaning of—himself. 

This is what free will means. In its perfectness it 
is the self become another. It is Christ in the man. It 
is the man become One Spirit with Christ. It is the love 
of God reproduced in the man, till the man, in God’s love, 
or God’s love in the man, has become a Divine response, 
adequate to, because truly mirroring, God. And in all 
its lesser degrees, it is the germ or capacity of this con- 
_ summation,—a process, more or less towards this. 

And since it is a man’s perfect correspondence with 
his own highest self, it will be found that the characteristic 
condition or method of it, while it remains unconsummated, 
is a constant subjection of his lower, to his higher, possi- 
bilities. But in all imperfect stages, especially in those who 
are only too pitifully conscious how far they have sinned 
against their higher nature, a steady subordinating of 
the lower to the higher is a process both stringent and 


228 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP, 


painful ; it is a constant submission of what seems to be 
the very self to a law of perfectness, which, however much 
it may be in truth his own perfectness, has at present at 
least to be looked for outside himself. And thus it is 
that obedience as obedience, obedience essentially to God, 
obedience in an immediate sense to law, is in fact, what- 
ever the paradox may seem to be, a direct note, and 
necessary method, of the growth of free will. Cud servire 
regnare. ‘Lhe perfect freedom is A7zs service. It is clear 
in the Person of Christ, who is the only model of perfect 
freedom of will, that perfect freedom of will, and perfect 
obedience to God, are not really distinguishable save as 
two necessary aspects of one thing. 

Perfect obedience, in a man, to God, is also perfect 
conformity with his own highest possibilities of wisdom 
and character; nor can he perfectly conform to his own 
highest self, without conforming thereby to the obedience 
of God. It is worth while to put this clearly, because this, 
and this only, is the true and direct meaning of obedience, 
This meanirig has constantly been obscured, not illustrated, 
when the word obedience has been carried over, without 
any proper thoughtfulness, or consciousness of the necessary 
qualifications, directly from obedience to God to obedience 
to man. If free will necessarily takes the form of obedi- 
ence, this means the obedience of the lower nature to } 
the higher, which is the same thing as obedience to God. 
The very purpose of such an obedience as this, is to © 
develop and strengthen individual freedom of will. But 
if obedience is to answer this purpose, of emancipating — 
and strengthening the true personal will; it must have 
this purpose unswervingly before its eyes, as the purpose 
which gives it its own essential character. Obedience 
does not mean subjection of will except to God who is 4 
its own highest perfectness; and it means subjection to f 
God, because subjection to God 7s individual perfectness, 









3 








1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 229 


the consummation of personal freedom in goodness. But 
obedience to man always may be, and constantly is, a very 
different thing. 

Obedience to man in some forms is obedience to God. 
For men in some cases are the real embodiment of the 
moral standard of wisdom and goodness of others. Such 
for instance is the true relation of a wise Christian mother 
to a little child. Or again there are conditions of sub- 
jection in which my duty to God: requires my meek 
acceptance of the rule “not only of the good and gentle, 
but also of the froward.”1 But this relation is not the 
proper meaning of obedience. It is tyranny on their 
part, and martyrdom on mine. My acceptance of martyr- 
dom is indeed true obedience, but the obedience is to God, 
not to man. Obedience to men in fact is a mere means 
to anend. At best it never is an end in itself. At worst 
it becomes a sacrilege and an abhorrence. The true end 
of legitimate obedience is the freedom and the strengthen- 
ing—not the crushing—of that sacred thing, the strong, 
divine, personal will. Any language that men have 
permitted themselves to use, whether of little children 
in the nursery, or of “religious” persons under monastic 
_ obligations, as though the “breaking of the will” were 
as such, an object to be aimed at, is already on the edge 
of sacrilege. A real effort to break the personal will is 
actual sacrilege. Man was not made to be a mere 
machine. The man who deliberately goes about to 
surrender the dignity of his own selfhood to the mere 
sway of another: or the man who endeavours to sway 
by his own judgment the selfhood of another: is really 
committing a sort of blasphemy against the majesty of 
the character of God. Itis not the breaking of the will, 
in favour of a sort of mechanical surrender of a self, made 
for Deity, to be a mere human machine: it is the breaking 


1 1 Pet. ii, 18. 


230 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


only of the enslaving fetters of idle whim or false habits 
upon the will, in the interest of the deepening and the 
strengthening of the true selfs freest exercise of will, till 
it is the very personal re-echoing of the perfectness of 
God: which is, and is alone, the legitimate outcome, or 
object, of any discipline of (so-called) obedience. But 
the minds are not always clear—even of good men; and 
men are not always good. There can be no practical 
doubt that, upon this point, both the monastic ideal, and 
the nursery ideal, have been, too often, grievously mis- 
conceived. Whether cloaking private obstinacy under 
the sanction of religious phrases, or through sheer in- 
tellectual incapacity to distinguish the true significance 
of obedience, men have very often upheld, perhaps too 
often even practised, a theory of obedience, which found 
its essential excellence in the crushing of the natural 
development of personal judgment and of personal will. 
The more the will was suppressed, the more the judg- 
ment was overruled,—not in obedience to an inner light, 
or a voice of command from God, but to the judgment 
and the will of other men,—so much the more perfect 
was the “obedience” conceived to be. Such a theory is 
in truth a terrible, and on analysis even a blasphemous, 
caricature. 

The commentary upon this theory which is supplied by 
the life of Jesus Christ is most notable. He is, on all 
showing, the one and only perfect model of obedience. 
His life never swerved from absolute dependence upon 
God. In obedience to the will of God He submitted Him- 
self, without a word, to the insolent outrage and cruelty of 
men. But some three or four times in His life we read of 
attempts that were made, and made (as we should have 
said) at least with kind purpose and in good faith, by 
those whom He loved, and who meant and tried to love 
Him,—to move Him to allow His judgment and will 











1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 231 


to be overruled by the judgment and will of others de- 
ciding for Him. In every case the answer came back in 
words—not of rudeness, as the English version might in 
one case suggest, but of penetrating rebuke which admitted 
neither of question nor reply,—“ Wist ye not that I must 
be about My Father’s business?” ‘Woman, what have I 
to do with thee?”* Both these to His own mother. And 
again of her, and her claim to intervene—“ Who is My 
mother ? and who are My brethren? . . . whosoever doeth 
the will of My Father which is in heaven, he is My 
brother, and sister, and mother.”* And as to the instance 
that remains,—never lightning flash shot from the sky 
with more sudden or more scathing outburst of power 
than was in His rebuke to the leader of the Twelve, “Get 
thee behind Me, Satan: for thou mindest not the things 
of God, but the things of men.”* His example is not 
encouraging to those, who would find the true essence 
of obedience in submission of the personal will and 
judgment to the judgment and the will of other men. 
It was worth while to lay some stress upon this, not only 
for its own intrinsic importance in illustrating the relation of 
obedience to free will; but also because, when this has been 
strongly said, it becomes possible to emphasize, without fear 
of being misinterpreted, a different lesson from monastic 
obedience, . If the theory has too often been held without 
due proportion, it does not follow that it has been so 
always. Moreover, even in cases where the theory may 
have been, as theory, misconceived: yet good men are so 
habitually better in their practice, than in their statement, 
of their own theories, that it would probably be simple 
truth of fact to say that many of the best and highest 
approaches towards the reality of freedom of will are to 
be found, as in former ages so in this, in the very directions 


1 St Luke ii. 49. 2 St John ii. 4. 
3 St Mat. xii. 48-50. 4 St Mark viii. 33. 


232 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


which men off-hand would think to be the least natural and 
least free; that is to say within the walls of self-effacing 
communities, in the common life of brotherhoods or of 
sisterhoods. For terrible as is the perversion to which their 
theory, if mis-stated, is liable, (as “ corruptio optimi pessima,”) 
yet, after all, they are constantly endeavouring to practise 
the discipline of not letting their wills be shaped (a shap- 
ing which is inchoate slavery) by the ease or whim of the 
moment; they are constantly teaching themselves to will, 
and will effectively, exactly the thing which they believe 
that they ought to will, simply because they believe that 
they ought to will it: and therefore they are acquiring, 
through submission to law,—the law which does so far 
correspond with the nature of their true highest being,— 
an insight into the secret of what freedom of will would 
mean. For our will is not free, until we have in ourselves 
the power effectually to will what we desire to will; and 
to desire exactly what we ought; that is, what belongs to 
the true perfection of ourselves. To discern what we 
ought, and to desire what we discern; and then to be 
able, with unhindered and untrammelled freedom of spirit, 
effectively to will what we desire: to be able in a word, to 
give full effect, by the sovereign spontaneity of our own 
will, to the supremest reality of the possibilities of our- 
selves: nothing less than this can be the real freedom of 
will. Its sovereignty consists not in lack of correspondence 
with that which is without, (for it is in perfect correspon- 
dence with that which is without that the self is perfectly 
realized,) but in that perfect emancipation from all disabilities 
within, all the tyrannies of false habit or indolent whim, 
which held the divine image back from really being either 
divine or itself. | 

It is plain, then, if the conception of free will suggested 
in this chapter has been, even approximately, true; that, 
whilst our experience necessarily starts with the witness 





1X.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 233 


to free will, the germ of free will, the capacity, and the 
necessary demand, for free will, yet we do not, in fact, 
possess that real freedom of will, which we cannot but, 
all the while, both imagine and claim. Something we 
possess which bears witness of it; which may be developed 
into it; but which, in its present imperfectness, is in many 
points even sharply contrasted with it. 

It is plain also that we grow more and more towards it, 
in proportion as our dependence upon, and union of Spirit 
with, Christ, become more vitally real in us. So that it 
appears that free will itself,—the very first thing which we 
most fundamentally claimed as showing what we meant 
by our own personality, or proving that we were personal 
indeed,—can only then, at last, be consummated in us, 
when our union is consummated with Christ; and the 
very Spirit of the Incarnate (in penitence alike, or in 
holiness, annihilating sin,) js the Spirit, which has become 
the constitutive reality, of ourselves. 


' Another claim which our personality makes, and by 
which it vindicates and explains itself to itself, is the claim 
to reason or wisdom. We rest upon our capacity of re- 
flection, in self-conscious thought, upon the universe and 
upon ourselves. “ Cogito, ergo sum” is the famous phrase 
which sums up a vast region of conscious, or unconscious 
argument as to the meaning of human personality. 

If for the moment, we speak of this claim as the claim 
to rational faculty, we do so in order to ask a little further 
what this word rational—or reason—means. Probably we 
imagine it first as a continuing process, of question and 
answer, and comparison, and inference, and discovery 
But question about what? and what does the answer con- 
vey? what is compared with what? and what is inferred 
or discovered? It is worth while to insist from the first 
that whatever difficulties of intellectual exercise, or 


234 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY lowar 


gradualness of process, or succession of surprises in dis- 
covery, may be in fact contained in our experience of 
rational capacity, these do not belong to the essence of 
what reason means. All these belong to the fact of 
its imperfection, not its essence. They belong to the 
fact that it is learning to develop, and is still at a very 
early stage of development. They may be compared to 
the unexpected puzzles, the comical surprises, and the 
delightful discoveries, which belong to infants in the 
earliest stage of acquiring the faculty of walking on their 
own legs. They are all part of the machinery, and part 
moreover of that grating and creaking of the machinery, 
which show that it is not really, as yet, in that proper 
symmetry of mutual relation, which is the ideal significance 
of even the clumsiest piece of actual machinery. We 
will decline, then, to mean by “rational faculty” anything 
in the least like the capacity of ingenious playing with 
logical processes for the sake of dialectical exercise or 
victory ; or even (as in some cases it may be) for the 
sake of obscuring and avoiding truth, No; we mean 
reason, not in its infantine capacity of turning ridiculous 
intellectual somersaults; nor yet in the strugglings and 
creakings of its own, as yet, imperfectly adjusted 
machinery; but we mean that which is the real aim 
and end of all these things, in its most real and serious . 
sense. We mean the capacity of personal insight into 
reality—of all kinds, and most of all into whatever is 
highest and most inclusive as reality: we mean personal 
capacity of beholding wisdom and truth. Truth of course 
is manifold and multiform. There are truths of material 
fact: truths of abstract statement: truths of historical 
occurrence: truths of moral experience: truths of spiritual 
existence: and that truth is deepest and truest, which 
most includes and unifies them all, Nothing whatever 
will be gained but mystification and error, from starting 





1x.) HUMAN PERSONALITY | 235 


with any conception of reason or “rational” which would 
make its essential meaning less, or other, than wisdom, 
personal discernment, the penetrative insight of the very 
self into truth, as true. 

Approaching, then, reason or wisdom in this way, 
we may say, first of all, that there is one aspect in which 
it will be much easier in the case of this claim, than in the 
claim to free will, to see at once that the minds of in- 
dividual persons realize truth, not in proportion as they 
are independent of, but rather as they perfectly correspond 
with and reflect, that larger truth of Mind, which is itself 
equally true whether reflected in individual apprehension or 
no. Obviously, in this case at least, the personal perfectness 
depends not on its diversity from, but on its identity with, 
a certain larger whole of which the personal perfectness 
is at most but a part. There is a truth, which is anterior 
to, and outside of, ourselves. It is in the universe; it is 
in all existence; it is the intelligibleness of everything ; 
it is the principle of motion by which all things move, of 
life by which life exists, of order which differentiates the 
universe from chaos, It is in ourselves; and it is by 
schooling ourselves to its study and discipline; it is in 
proportion as we learn, with more perfect apprehension, 
to enter for ourselves into this Mind of truth, of which our 
existence, whether material or mental, is already in some 
sense a part, that we ourselves become, more and more, 
rational and wise. The claim to reach wisdom by some 
transcendental method of improving upon, instead of by 
simple subordination to, the apprehension of things which 
already are, would be felt, on all hands, to be a claim 
which must really characterize, not so much the exception- 
ally wise, as the hopelessly insane. 

But if there is one obvious sense, from the first, in which 
it can be said that individual reason or wisdom only 
realizes itself, in proportion as it becomes a conscious part 


236 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


of a much more inclusive whole, faithfully mirroring, 
because it has become so far self-identified with, what was 
from the first, and still is, beyond itself: this is but 
an aspect of a truth which needs further supplementing, in 
other ways. 

This is, so far, an abstract statement, which is true of 
any finite mind as mind, in relation to anything which can 
be called truth at all. But it is important to observe that 
truth is of many kinds, and that different kinds of truth 
appeal to many different strands in the complex conscious- 
ness of man. The truths of infantine experience in 
material surroundings: the truths of arithmetic: the truths 
of physiology: the truths of metaphysical philosophy or 
of moral experience,—do not appeal to a single faculty 
in man. It is not so much true to say that they appeal to 
different parts of his personality, as that they appeal— 
partly to somewhat different combinations, and still more to 
somewhat different amounts, or degrees, of that complex 
completeness which is himself. A moral lesson about 
truth or falsehood, if really apprehended by a child, not as 
an interesting story only, but as part of that inner store, 
which is at once mental knowledge and moral resolve, and 
which we know as character; has in fact required for 
its apprehension, and has, in the act of apprehension, really 
touched and enlarged, a much wider range of experiences 
and capacities, than any lesson of simple arithmetic, 
or simple science. All knowledge is not equal as 
knowledge. There is a real hierarchy of truths; and 
though every truth has its value, yet a deeper and more 
abiding value belongs to those which affect and include 
the widest inclusiveness of human faculties. Now, man’s 
moral consciousness is a wider and more inclusive thing, as 
consciousness, than what we often call, by an effort of 
logical abstraction (as if we could really eliminate the 
mental from the moral, or the moral from the mental), his 


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1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 237 


“merely” intellectual or rational power. And spiritual 
truth is that which gives its ultimate meaning to the 
moral, and alone really vivifies and unifies the entire 
consciousness of man. It is true that fire burns. It 
is true that the angles of a triangle are equal to two 
right angles. The law of gravitation, the principle 
of the conservation of energy, are statements of 
truth. It is true that man is mortal. It is true that 
goodness is happiness. It is true that God is love, 
It is true that the perfectness of man’s capacity is 
communion with God. But if these propositions are all 
true, it is manifest that the truth of some of them includes 
and affects the entire range, and the noblest consummation, 
of the capacities of man’s personality, in a way in which 
the truth of others does not. It is manifest moreover that 
just in proportion as these different truths affect, if true, 
a wider range of man’s being: so they require that 
wider range of man’s being and experience, for the 
possibility of their apprehension as truths. It is a very 
small part of man’s complex nature by which he fully 
understands that two and two make four. But com- 
munion with God, if ever he fully understands it at all, he 
will certainly not understand with anything less than the 
total range of all his capacities, mental, moral, and spiritual. 
And, moreover, in his understanding of it, he will recognize 
the hierarchical relation of his own faculties; those that are 
deepest and highest of capacity obviously transcending, 
and dominating,—even while they include,—those whose 
range, as more limited, is recognized as being really lower 
in level.* 


1 In connection with this section of the present chapter, I may perhaps be 
allowed to make reference to an essay on the mutual inter-dependence 
of ‘‘ Reason and Religiou,” in which I endeavoured, a few years ago, to 
discuss, with somewhat more fulness, the true meaning, and the different 
manifestations, of reason. I refer to it in the main, simply as a more expanded 
statement of my present meaning. But whilst doing so I should like to take 


238 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


It is a truth familiar to human experience that, for the ap- 
prehension of moral and spiritual truth, moral and spiritual 
experience is indispensable. You cannot apprehend 
spiritual truths by precisely and solely the same faculties 
with which you apprehend scientific facts. The apprehend- 
ing mind must itself be moral and spiritual, if it is to have 
intelligence in the region of moral and spiritual things. 
But it is a familiar fallacy of human language, that just 
when man’s power of rational intelligence is reaching 
its own highest forms and highest powers, to deal with its 
own highest subject matter, the terms intelligent and 
rational are too often withdrawn, as though they belonged, 
by a sort of exclusive right, to those lower regions of 
experience, of which they were first used, and in which 
they are most widely familiar. This is partly a con- 
sequence of the misleading attempt to abstract mental 
from moral, and moral from mental, as though they could 
be, at any stage, really sundered the one from the other: 
and it issues in the preposterous result, that human 
reason and wisdom, just when they are developing 
into their own highest consummation, that is to say 
when they are becoming luminously spiritual, are supposed, 
just because they are becoming spiritual, to pass wpso facto 
away from what can be called human reason or intelligence 
at all. The truths which men are inclined to call 
distinctively rational, the truths in apprehending which the 
moral nature bears no part, are simply lower in plane than 
moral truths: while moral truths, so called, of which the 
key and clue, nay the whole ultimate life and meaning, are 


the opportunity of saying expressly that in the opening pages of the last paper 
which that little volume contains there are a few phrases which I should cer- 
tainly wish to modify now. The modification would be rather in pursuance, 
than in contradiction, of what was really the essential thought of that paper. 
But I should certainly now prefer to avoid, as misleading, any use, in reference 
to human personality, of any phrase, such as ‘‘a distinct centre of being,” 
which might even seem to conceive of it at all otherwise than in its capacity of 
relation to, and dependence on, God. 





OS a ee Pee ee ce, 


1X.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 239 


not spiritual, are like buildings on the sand, which have, in 
time of stress, no sure foundation. 

In all cases alike, mental, moral, and spiritual, man’s 
capacity of reason or wisdom is really in fact his power 
of perception or insight into truth which is already actually 
true; it is his power of realizing, by conscious reflection, 
what are anyhow, with him or without him, the methods or 
principles of the Being of God. To see, in the white, worn, 
bleeding flesh of a crucified convict, the LORD of Life and 
of Death, was no exercise of ordinary, or scientific, reason 
in the mind of the penitent thief. But it was true insight, 
into truth, as true, not the less but the more, for that. 
To see God in every common sight: to see Christ above 
all in the daily experience of the Christian life ;1 to see 
the majesty of His presence in the person of the poor 
and sordid sufferer; to see the glory of His Spirit in 
little efforts for good which the world, if it saw them at 
all, would resent or despise: this requires indeed condi- 
tions and faculties of insight which we sometimes, by per- 
verse antithesis, are ready even to contrast with 
“rational”; and yet it is, after all, a true insight into 
truth of Divine fact, in the highest conceivable plane of 
Divine truth. 

It is true, no doubt, that the essential faculties for 
such insight as this may be wanting in many minds, 
in which many lower branches of rational apprehension 
are developed in even exceptional degrees. It is of 
course open to the world to deny that any such things are 
true at all: to deny alike the Person of Christ and the 
Being of God. But it is not open to any one to doubt 
the relative importance of these truths, if they be true, 
The insight which discerns the Spirit, and can see the 
Christ,—if it is a truth at all and not a lie—must needs be, 
by the universal confession of all rational minds, higher 

1 John xiv. 19, etc, 


240 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


as insight into truth as true, higher that is as human 
reason or wisdom, than the most accurate apprehension 
of any truth, however inclusive, in the merely material 
sphere. Our current language, then, is apt both to narrow, 
and also to isolate, reason over much. Reason means 
much more than we are content to suppose; and it is, 
even from its very lowest beginning,—and is more and 
more as it rises in scope and significance,—inseparable 
from the rest of man’s nature, with which we continue 
to contrast it, but with which its highest powers are 
increasingly interwoven. Its own highest ranges and 
powers, which current language more than half disowns, 
are found in fact to be more and more dependent upon, 
more and more identified with, that consummation of 
the self by its passing beyond itself, that self-realization in 
oneness with the Spirit of the Incarnate Christ, in which 
we have found already the crown and climax of the 
meaning of human free will. 

There is one aspect more in reference to which it is 
well to add a few words before passing from the present 
subject. It has just been said that Intelligence in its 
higher ranges, is less and less distinct from the total 
man. As in God, Truth, Goodness, Love, Eternity, 
Almightiness, though different attributes, are perfected 
only in an ultimate unity, which is absolutely every one 
of them all—so that Truth is not really Truth, nor 
Holiness Holiness, apart from Love: nor can Love be 
ultimately Love, that is not Holiness and also Truth, and 
also infinite and Almighty Being: so, in measure, it is 
with the ideal consummation of man. The more, then, 

the human attribute of reason or wisdom approaches, as it 
does approach in its higher significance, to affecting and 
involving the whole man: the more obvious does the 
principle become that it will not lie outside of, but will fall 
within that law which is the law of the whole man’s 


—— oe 





1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 241 


development,—the law of perfection through sacrifice. As 
free will, that it may become free, has by what looks like 
a suicidal plunge, to sacrifice the only thing which seemed 
at first to constitute its freedom: as the capacity of joy, 
that it may become joy indeed, in the true and only real 
sense of what joy means, has to forego by strong effort of 
self-sacrificing will, not only the things which seemed at 
first to be the necessary conditions of joy, but almost (as 
it seems) if not quite, in many cases, what looked like the 
very capacity of joy itself: as, in each case, that is to say, 
there is an apparent, and a lower, form of excellence, the 
deliberate sacrifice of which is the condition of the de- 
velopment of the higher: so it is with reason or wisdom. 
The faculty of reason appears to a man at first as if 
it were enthroned alone, in its pride: as if it were by 
itself, as he knows it,—that is, as he feels that it is, or is 
coming to be, in himself,—the sovereign judge and sole 
arbiter of everything, in every sphere, which offers itself 
to his consideration as true. He helps himself, indeed, 
and teaches himself, by the reason of other men. But 
the real judge and arbiter is, after all, in himself. - Now 
even such a form of self-assertion as this is not wholly, 
in words, untrue—provided it first be learnt what the 
self is, and what the conditions are of its self-realization. 
There is indeed a gauge of wisdom in the transfigured 
self. But the self has first to be transfigured. There is 
a pride of what seems at first like wisdom to be cut 
sharply down, that the root of the true wisdom may 
begin to put out its shoots. It is not unlike free will, 
or self love, or the instinctive desire for joy, in this. 
It has to come down from its pedestal of glory, and to 
confess how near is the natural pride of human intellect 
to the consummation of folly. It has to recognize, through 
a cleansing process, which is none the less really an in- 
tellectual discipline, because it palpably belongs to the 
Q 


242 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (cHapP. 


sphere of moral causes and effects,—first how it is that 
the wisdom of the wise is outdone, even as wisdom, by 
what seemed as the merest foolishness to that which 
foolishly thought itself wisdom once: and secondly how 
it is that not the isolation of intellect as intellect, but 
the absolute surrender of personal allegiance, allegiance 
of spirit to the Spirit of the Incarnate,—that Spirit whose 
wisdom is not other than holiness, nor His holiness other 
than wisdom,—is the condition ultimately essential for 
seeing the whole, or the true proportion, of truth. It is 
not the poor, weak, unaided intellect of the isolated 
individual ; .it is not intellect in relation to a universe 
of which itself is regarded as centre or crown; it is 
rather the insight of character, the intellect of goodness, 
it is the personal intellect as illumined by the Spirit, 
which is the reflection of truth. 

It is not indeed that the powers of human intellect are 
contemptible. The powers of human intellect are trans- 
cendent, beyond all capacity of utterance. But the condi- 
tion of the development of the transcendent powers of 
human intellect is its self-surrender, and through self- 
surrender, transformation, from its first nakedness of separate 
self-sufficiency—to the humblest and most dutiful com- 
munion with God. By sacrifice of what seemed to it 
once to be its very self, its essential independence of 
prerogative, it arises purified: the scales dropped off; 
the mote and the beam alike gone: the eyes of the Spirit 
really opened; the vision of God unveiled. It had been 
trying to read the secret of wisdom through methods and 
under limitations which made any real apprehension there- 
of impossible. Vainly, to the end of time, will human 
wisdom that has passed through no regenerating process, 
—-spirit-humbling at once, and eye-opening; vainly, that 
is, will philosophy, otherwise than in conscious and open 
dependence upon Christian theological truth, attempt to 





1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 243 


read the riddle of existence, whether in external pheno- 
mena, or in man, or in God. 

Beyond all question this is the claim,—as it is the 
experience,—of St Paul. Whatever difficulty there may 
be in stating accurately, in words, the nature of the change 
which natural reason undergoes before it can see the 
deeper reality, and right proportion, of truth; it is clear 
that there is a transformation, of a moral and spiritual 
order, without which intellect must still remain disordered 
and incompetent as intellect. It is expressly of philosophy 
apart from Christian truth, apart from a Christian’s 
knowledge of the personality of God, and the personality 
of man—its utter incompleteness and the conditions of 
its self-realization,—that he says, “Where is the wise? 
where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? 
Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 
For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its 
wisdom knew not God, it was God’s good pleasure through 
the foolishness of the preaching” [the R.V. margin points 
out that it is, in the Greek, “the thing preached” tov 
knpbypatos,| “to save them that believe. ... Christ cruci- 
fied, unto Jews a stumbling -block, and unto Gentiles 
foolishness ; but unto them that are called, both Jews and 
Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of 
God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; 
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” The 
passage should be considered continuously to the end 
of the 3rd chapter, ¢.g. “Even so the things of God none 
knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not 
the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; 
that we might know the things that are freely given to 
us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words 
which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit 


F teacheth: ... the natural man receiveth not the things 


1 1 Cor. i. 20, 59g. 


244 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him ; 
and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually 
judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things... 
we have the mind of Christ.... If any man thinketh 
that he is wise among you in this world, let him become 
a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this 
world is foolishness with God ... Wherefore let no one 
glory in men. For all things are yours;... all are 
yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” Only 
as the property of Christ,—wholly dependent on Christ, 
as Christ is dependent on God,—can man, as a “reason- 
able” personality, realize the significance, or attain the 
consummation, of what “reason” in a personality really 
means, 

We have spoken hitherto, first of man’s claim to the 
possession of free will, and then of his claim to the posses- 
sion of reason. These differ from each other, not so much 
as diverse parts or faculties of man, but rather as different 
aspects of his total self, for his total self is, in fact, implied 
and included in each. In either case, we found that 
though man’s original claim was by no means without 
foundation, yet the germs which he actually possessed were 
something extremely remote from what the full idea, 
whether of free will or of reasonable wisdom, would be 
found, on analysis, necessarily to involve. In either case 
moreover we observed that man approximated towards the 
realization of his own inherently necessary idea, whether of 
reason or of free will, in proportion as he ceased to be, or 
even to seem to be, “merely” himself; in proportion as he 
was made one with the Spirit of the Christ, and, in fact, 
attained at last to the full realization of himself in the act 
of what had once looked like the inanition of self;—his frank 
and full surrender of all faculties to a life of self-identifica- 
tion with Another, In either case, finally, we saw indica- 
tions that the consummation of one aspect of man’s being 


1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 245 


was the breaking down of its distinction from other aspects 
However far from each other, in their rudimentary stages, 
inchoate freedom of will and inchoate reason may appear to 
us to be: the higher they rise in the scale of their own 
completeness, the less, it seemed, could either free will be con- 
ceived apart from insight of wisdom, or insight of wisdom 
apart from its necessary aspect as determination of character. 
We had reason more than to suspect that the final con- 
summation of either would necessarily be the consummation 
of both: or rather that, in final consummation, they are 
not, and cannot be, distinguished any longer as two; they 
are but inseparable aspects of one identity. 


In respect of the third instinctive claim which man 
makes to personality,—his capacity of love,—it will not be 
necessary to speak at great length. This is not, for a 
moment, because love is of less significance for the purpose 
than either reason, or free will. On the contrary it is, if 
possible, more significant still. But it is because the 
different considerations which were comparatively obscure 
in respect of free will and of reason, are so clear in the case 
of love, that at some points they almost approach to being 
self-evident. Following the analogy of the former cases, 
we should be prepared for such propositions as these. 
First, that man had, from the beginning of his conscious- 
ness, something which witnessed to the idea of love, which, 
through whatever perversions, had affinity with it, which 
constituted an instinctive claim to it, and was known by its 
name. Secondly, that, on examination, this love which he 
certainly had, was not only not the real completeness of 
that idea of love, of which it bore witness, and which was 
knowable through it; but was even, in many points, in 
extreme antithesis against what was, all the time, its own 
true ideal. Thirdly, that it was not by mere addition, but 
by very considerable subtraction; not by building on, 


246 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. — 


but by cutting away; by discipline, and refusal, and 
sacrifice, of a very great part of what had seemed to be the 
necessary conditions, if not the very capacity itself, of love; 
that the natural love, with which man starts, is emancipated 
from the slavery of its own imperfectness, and begins to 
acquire the capacity of corresponding to what love ideally 
means. Fourthly, that the nearer it approaches to its ideal 
consummation as love, the less is it capable of being 
practically separated, or at last even distinguished, from 
such other aspects of man’s total being, as his reason, or 
his will; which are, in fact, implied and absorbed within 
love. And fifthly, that the process towards this consumma- 
tion can be seen to coincide with the gradual realization of 
the self;—not by progressive distinction from all that 
seemed to be not self, but by progressive self-surrender to 
what at first offered itself for acceptance as “other” ;—by 
progressive self-identity with that Spirit of the Incarnate, 
which being the very Spirit of God in, and as, human 
character, is found to be the consummation of the perfect- 
ness of the self of every man. 

After what has been said it hardly seems necessary to 
dwell upon these statements one by one. There is perhaps 
no word in human language which has had a wider range 
of significance, or, it must be added, a history of pro- 
founder degradation, than love. It has ranged from the 
depths of hell to the highest height of heaven. It has 
described the darkest perversions of which the godlike 
nature of man is capable. Yet in its true self it is more 
than Godlike: it is God. 

Not only are there a thousand different forms of what 
can be openly convicted as perverse love of self, devotion 
to what is known, at bottom, to be evil, love really of the 
world, and the flesh, and the devil. There are also a 
thousand, and again a thousand, most intricate and de- 
ceptive combinations of the evil and the good, the hideous 


te ek ~ 





1X.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 247 


and the beautiful. There is tainted love of country, 
ambitious love of office or industry or wisdom, selfish 
love of home, and of all the beautiful things that home 
might represent: nay, there is self-aggrandising phil- 
anthropy, selfish love of unselfishness, self-centred self- 
sacrifice ;1 until we sometimes fairly reel with the sense 
of the hopelessness of ever being free from the web of 
insidious perversions with which every apparent approach 
to real love is enmeshed. But does any one, in his 
moments of serious thought, really mistake all, or any 
one, of these, for that reality of Spirit, of which St John 
speaks; “God is love; and he that abideth in love 
abideth in God, and God abideth in him.” .. . “We know 
that we have passed out of death into life, because we 


love the brethren.” “Hereby know we that we abide in 
Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His 
Spirit” ?? 


On the other hand has any one once seen a face out 
of which all mocking unrealities of aggressive, or even 
of deceptive, selfishness had faded wholly at last; a face 
which was animated by the very purity of the flame of 
the Spirit which at last was love? Or, at the least, have 
we not all seen some moments, some glimpses, of this? 
Just so far we know that we too have seen real glimpses 
of the face of the love of God. 

There is nothing, in fact, in the five statements which 
were made just now which is not covered by the glowing 
words of St John. Only on one aspect more a few words 
may be added. It is a commonplace in the doctrine of 
love,—that the root of opposition to love is self. There 
is of course an apparent love which is merely ministering 
to self.. But the conquest of self is the true emancipation 
of love. Love versus self, then, and self versus love is 
the familiar antithesis: so that self-love is the contradiction 


1: Cor, xiii. 3. 2 1 John iv, 16; iii. 143 iv. 13. 


248 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


of love’s reality; and the total subjugation of the self is 
the finding of love. But if the subjugation of the seif 
is the finding of love, it may be asked which self? for the 
total subjugation of the natural self as truly is the finding 
of the true self as it is the finding of love. ‘ Whosoever 
shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.” If the crown- 
ing of the natural self is the ruin of love; yet the crowning 
of love is the crowning of the true self. This is but 
another witness to the essential truth of the law of 
sacrifice. Whether it be free will, or reason, or love, the 
imperfect cannot be educated into the perfect by natural 
processes. The false cannot of itself grow into the true. 
The sour cannot become sweet, through grafting, without 
the knife. 


The question with which this chapter began, and to 
which all its thought is really directed, is this; what is 
the relation of the Spirit of God, become through In- 
carnation the Spirit of Man; what is the relation (in a 
single word) of Pentecost, to the meaning of human 
personality? And the answer is, that it is only through 
Pentecost that the meaning of human personality is ever 
actually realized at all. It is only through absolute 
oneness with the Spirit of Human perfection that the 
perfect meaning of Humanity can ever be touched or 
seen. Only the man who is consummated in God has 
attained the fulness of what was, all through, from the 
very beginning, the inherent craving, and ideal significance, 
of personal self-hood in man. 

It is the capital mistake of human thought to set out 
with the conception of human self-hood, as though it were 
already a completed verity, realizing within itself, as 
actual realities, the different attributes or necessities, 
the witness to which is indeed exhibited in itself. It has 
been the capital mistake of expositions of atonement in 


ae 


1X] HUMAN PERSONALITY 249 


particular, when they would explain how the Cross of 
Christ benefited me, to treat the word “I” as a single, 
indivisible term, of unchallenged and self-evident meaning, 
which did not, because it could not, vary throughout the 
whole process of its salvation; and outside of which, 
therefore, the process must be shown to be both complete 
and intelligible. 

Not so. The “I” is only, in its early experience, a 
most tentative, inchoate, and imperfect, realization of 
what the word “I” needs to mean. In respect of each 
of the three main component aspects or elements of 
personality, as we analyze or explain it to ourselves, 
Freedom of Will, and Reason or Wisdom, and Love; 
we have some reason for saying that there is no man 
who really possesses them, or any one of them, in its 
own proper meaning, by himself. Something he possesses 
which corresponds to each one; but something which un- 
ess purified, and enlarged, and transformed,—through the 
method of suffering and sacrifice,—will be found not only 
to fall short of, but even ultimately to contradict, its own 
inherent significance. We have none of them, save with 
this fatal imperfectness, till our true selves are set free 
from their damning caricature; till we become our true 
selves, consummated and complete, through the indwelling 
completeness of the Spirit of the Incarnate Christ. 

It will not be denied that this is cardinal to the 
teaching of the Gospel of Christ’s Church. “Abide in 
Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of 
itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye 
except ye abide in Me. I am the vine, ye are the 
branches ; he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same 
beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do 
nothing.” “Even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I 
in Thee, that they also may be in Us... that they may 

1 John xv. 4, 5. 


250 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, 
that they may be perfected into one.”! “He that is 
joined to the Lord is one Spirit.”? “But if any man hath 
not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.”? “Try your 
own selves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own 
selves. Or know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus 
Christ is in you? unless indeed ye be reprobate.”* Even 
texts like these are but samples of a vast body of teaching 
that is vitally characteristic. 

It is indeed most familiar to Christian thought, that 
the excellent glory of a man is only in personal union 
and communion with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. But even 
this thought has too often been conceived on the basis 
of a tacit assumption, that whatever excellency of beauty 
he, the man, might receive through the Spirit: yet he, the 
real he, was at least as “he” complete anyhow ;—was, 
from the first, essentially and consummately himself. 
Though he, in the dutiful exercise of his freedom of will 
his rational wisdom, and his love,—every one of which, he 
was conceived of as inherently realizing,—might be the 
recipient of divinely adorning gifts, or might enter into 
new and divine relations, leading him onwards to the 
glory of unimaginable beatitude: yet by the very terms of 
the thought, if strictly pressed, the divine gifts, as gifts, the 
beauty, as adornment, the beatitude, as joy (however 
unspeakable), were differentiated from the “he”: were 
rather conditions outside of, than the inherent character 
which constituted, the central reality of the self. It is 
precisely this assumption that we have desired to correct. 
Our point is that it is only through the indwelling of the 
Spirit that the “he” begins to be realized in the true and 
proper sense of a “he” at all. 

Is it seriously to be thought that a human personality, 


1 John xvii. 21-3. 21 Cor. vi. 17. 
* Rom. viii. 9. 42 Cor, xiii. 5, 


1x,] HUMAN PERSONALITY 251 


in whom all freedom of will, actual or possible, is more 
and more progressively enslaved to the most degrading 
and destructive of tyrannies; in whom what once was 
called reason or wisdom is more and more progressively 
incapable of the highest discernment of truth, the vision of 
God and of His Christ, forever; in whom love, so called, 
having long lost all real affinity with the true meaning of 
love, which is the essential and inherent presence of God, 
comes to be every day with merer and merer nakedness, 
the most blasphemous form of self-worship, and by 
consequence the very spite of impotent hatred against 
whatever is, in any way, godlike or good; in whom, in a 
word, every faculty, which even our instinctive thought 
connects with the barest conception of personality, is 
manifestly degenerating into ruin at least, if not into 
dissolution ; is it seriously to be thought that such an one, 
nevertheless, from first to last, fully realizes in himself all 
that human personality, as such, can rightly be said to 
mean ? 

On the other hand, where the Spirit of the Incarnate 
is indwelling, He is present neither as a distinct or 
extraneous gift, nor as an overruling force in which the 
self is merged and lost, but as the consummation of the self. 
It is no doubt perfectly true to speak of the “Spirit” as 
the “gift” of God. But there is a point at which even this 
true phrase may rather obscure than illustrate the truth. 
For to speak of a gift given to me is so far to distinguish 
in thought between me and the gift: and just so far as I 
distinguish I begin to go wrong. Even indeed when I 
speak of a presence “within me,” I do still, to a certain 
extent, by the very terms used, make the presence and the 
“me” not identical. And so far again I fall short, not 
indeed of any present experience, but of the ideal truth 
which I am fain to express. For the very meaning, at least 
of the ultimate reality of the Spirit in me, is that this 


252 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


distinction is no longer real. The gift of the Spirit is a 
gift—an objective gift if you will—how different from the 
original “I” to whom He is given! yet this very gift is 
only real after all, in so far as He is in me subjectively 
realized. So that after all it is perhaps not so much, nor 
so distinctively, true to say an objective gift, as a subjective 
receiving and response; not so much, or at least not so 
ultimately, something that is conferred upon the “I,” as 
what the “I” becomes in, and through, receiving. He is 
not a mere presence zz me, overruling, controlling, dis- 
placing. What He in me does,I do. What He in me 
wills, I will. What He in me loves, I love. Nay, never 
is my will so really free: never is my power so worthy of 
being called power: never is my rational wisdom so 
rational or so wise; never is my love so really love; never 
moreover is any one of these things so royally my own; 
never am I, as I, so capable, so personal, so real; never am 
I, in a word, as really what the real “I” always tried to 
mean ; as when by the true indwelling of the Spirit of God, 
I enter into the realization of myself; as when I at last 
correspond to, and fulfil, and expand in fulfilling, all the 
unexplored possibilities of my personal being, by a 
perfect mirroring of the Spirit of Christ; as when in Him 
and by Him I am, at last, a true, willing, personal response 
to the very Being of God. 

The capacities are indeed unexplored. It is to be re- 
membered that even Jesus Christ upon earth, while He 
was the perfect expression of Divine Personality in 
Humanity, yet was so only under conditions, deliberately 
self chosen, of mortal and penitential disability. But the 
essential conditions of personality, in its proper consumma- 
tion, are neither penitential nor mortal. We must look 
beyond even Christ’s manifestation on earth, beyond all 
penitential and mortal conditions, beyond all possibilities 
of realized experience, to discern anything of that trans- 


1X.) HUMAN PERSONALITY 253 


cendent glory which was, after all, the true underlying 
meaning of our dim solitary struggling effort of personality, 
and of the freedom, the reason, and the love, which we dimly 
recognized as elements necessary to its fulness. “ Behold 
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, 
that we should be called children of God: and such we 
are.... Beloved now are we children of God, and it is 
not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, 
if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we 
shall see Him even as He is.”1 “Now the Lord is the 
Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is 
liberty. But we all with unveiled face reflecting as a 
mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the 
same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord 
the Spirit.”* Not that the Spirit, by constituting the 
personality of all, will make all alike. He will not over- 
rule to uniformity, but develop the several possibilities of 
every one. They will differ,as much as and far more than, 
the difference,—in equal glory,—of the stars or the flowers. 
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
moon, and another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth 
from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of 
the dead.” ® 

What then, once more, is our statement of human 
personality? It is no several or separate thing. Its 
essentia cannot be found in terms of distinctness. It does 
not, ideally or practically, signify a new, independent, 
centrality of being. On the contrary, it is altogether de- 
pendent and relative, It is not first self-realized in dis- 
tinctness, that it may afterwards, for additional perfection 
of enjoyment, be brought into relations. In relation 
and dependence lies its very essentia. Wherever the least 
real germ of it exists, the true meaning of even that 
germinal and tentative life, as seen in what it is capable 


1 3 John iii. 1, 2. 2 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18. ® 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42 


254 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


of becoming, is this. It is the capacity of thrilling, in 
living response, to the movement of the Spirit; it is the 
aspiration, through conscious affinity (in such hope as is the 
pledge of its own possibility) after the very beauty of 
holiness; it is the possibility of self-realization, and 
effective self-expression, as love; it is the prerogative of 
consciously reflecting, as a living mirror, the very character 
of the Being of God. This, and nothing less, is the true 
reality of personality, that reality which we claim so easily, 
and so very imperfectly attain. It is only by realizing 
this that we ever can realize the fulness of what is, in fact, 
demanded and implied in the very consciousness of being 
a person. Personality is the possibility of mirroring God; 
the faculty of being a living reflection of the very attri- 
butes and character of the Most High. 

Whilst, then, it may be true that philosophical thought 
is more or less explicitly teaching us that created person- 
ality is not, and cannot be, a really distinct or self-sub- 
sistent centre of being ; that all existence must be, in its 
ultimate reality, not multiplicity but unity; that the par- 
ticular can only reach its own proper self-realization in 
the way of relation, as part of the universal and the 
absolute: it is plain that at least to Christian theology 
the corresponding language is not strange, but inveterately 
familiar and congenial. Here at least Christian theology 
speaks, with simplicity and confidence, of truths which 
have always been clear and certain to herself. To her at 
least, if, on the one hand, the several self, as several, is 
true—in a sense and with a capacity neither conceived 
nor conceivable elsewhere; on the other hand, human 
personality, just so far as it claims to be self-centred or 
self-contained, is personality, so far, in contradiction 
against all that personality ought to mean. To Christian 
theology at least, the loneliness of a personality single 
and sundered, is a condition that of necessity belongs— 


1x.] HUMAN PERSONALITY 255 


not to life, but to death. If any one desires a Christian 
formula for the central conception of human personality, 
it may be gathered from the words of St Paul, “I have 
been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer 
I, but Christ liveth in me.”! I, yet not I. Not I, and 
therefore I, the full, real, consummated “I,” at last! Here 
is the real inmost principle of life and immortality brought 
to light by the gospel of Christ. And the words of St 
John are a significant comment; “We know that the Son 
of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that 
we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that 
s true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true 
God, and eternal life.”* And both phrases are but com- 
ments on those supreme words of the Incarnate to the 
Eternal, of the Christ to God; “I in them and Thou in 
Me, that they may be perfected into one”... “that the 
love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I 
in them.”? 


1 Gal. ii. 90, 3 x John v. 20. 8 John xvii. 23-26. 


CHAPTER X 
THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 


IF we turn from the side of theory to the familiar 
experience of the Christian life, it is sufficiently manifest 
that the religious character, so far as it is realized, is a 
character which is at every point, and for everything that 
it is, not self-sufficing, but dependent on Another. “It 
is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that 
speaketh in you”+ is a pregnant saying, representing the 
very principle of the inwardness of the individual Christian 
life. 

This essential religious reality, wherever it is a reality 
at all, is recognized all the world over in two most 
universal and necessary ways. First in the habit— 
whether more formulated or less,—of meditation and 
prayer. The thoughts of a religious man, in their un- 
conscious roaming, as well as in the efforts which they 
consciously pursue, turn upwards and Godwards. And 
such thoughts culminate in prayer ;—the perfectly deliber- 
ate uplifting and effort of the self, as self, and all that 
it is or may be, in the way of yearning and request 
towards God. Such thought, and such prayer, (whether 
when measured by the clock they seem to occupy a 
longer or a shorter portion of his occupied time,) cannot 
be, to the religious man, a merely occasional exception, 
intervening in great contrast with the true inward ‘tenor 
of his thought and life. On the contrary, it is they which 


1 Matt. x. 20. 
256 








Seen omer Cee 
ey Cree ae 


cHAy.x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 257 


are the real staple, the underlying background, of all 
his consciousness. Outwardly he may be a busy priest, 
or a busy statesman, or lawyer, or tradesman, or labourer, 
or what you will. But underneath these things, the form 
of which is comparatively accidental, (though in each 
case, at first sight, it seems to constitute the life,) runs 
that steady stream of thoughtfulness and of prayerfulness 
to Godward; which, though it may not determine the 
direction of professional duty, yet determines absolutely, 
and dominates in the detail of every particular, the 
temper and the method in which duty is done. To try 
to imagine a religious man without meditation in any 
form (it may be almost infinitely informal) and without 
any effort of prayer,—is to try to imagine what is little 
else than a contradiction in terms. 

Correlative with this, the secret of the inward conscious- 
ness, is that shaping of the outward conduct, that deliberate 
obedience of the moral life, to which we have already 
partly referred, because it is so inseparable from prayerful- 
ness, that it was difficult to express the meaning of 
prayerfulness without language which at once, in a 
measure, had trenched upon the region of the outward 
life. Such obedience, whether in the shape of discipline 
strongly restraining forbidden impulses, or of duty, in- 
sisting upon what is neither natural nor easy, is obviously 
a rudimentary form of what in its fulness would be a 
life wholly conformed to, and lived by, a standard of 
excellence, such as certainly had not been, by nature or 
at first, to be found within itself. It is an element in the 
necessary process of learning to find, outside the personal 
impulses, the true focus and centre of inspiration of the 
personal life. It is part of that uphill work of becoming 
a law to oneself, in which the “law,” (called “law” because 
conceived of, and indeed experienced, as standing out- 


side and in contrast with the self,) in proportion as it 
R 


258 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY |CHAP. 


becomes internal and spontaneous to the self, loses all 
its aspect as coercive law, and is felt only as independent 
strength of moral self-command. Such effort, at least, 
towards obedience, is entirely characteristic of the religious 
life, not only in respect of its obviously graver and more 
responsible decisions, but in the imperceptible self-restraints 
and self-orderings which make up all the detail of every- 
day manners,—those morning and evening brightnesses 
and courtesies and sincere kindnesses of bearing and of 
purpose, of which “gentlemanly” and “ladylike” manners 
are a sort of superficial imitation or reflection on the 
surface. 

Such things, in principle at least, have their place 
within the ideal of every life that is religiously ordered. 
But in the Christian life there is something else which,— 
whilst as a matter of course it includes and inspires these, 
using them to a point and with a meaning little dreamed 
of elsewhere,—is yet even more characteristic of the 
distinctive revelation and living power of the Christ. 
This is the whole range of the Church’s sacramental 
system. The Christian sacraments are, in the outward 
sphere, a note or symbol of distinctively Christian life. 
And they are so just because their real significance is 
not in the outward sphere at all. The Christian sacra- 
ments, as mere pieces of formal observance, are nothing, 
or are less than nothing. They really are means, in them- 
selves of the simplest kind that can be _ conceived, 
by the use of which, in humble and dutiful belief, that 
personal union in Spirit with the Personal Christ, towards 
which prayerfulness yearns and which obedience makes 
effort to practise, is by Christ’s act and on the side of 
Christ, in response to approaches reverently made in the 
way precisely dictated by Himself, more and more pro- 
gressively and effectively made real. Personal union 
with Christ, the early token and earnest of a consumma- 


a gl bei St a cat r 
ye PT eat pe Bd cae ee 


SE Fe acon ay 





x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 259 


tion more than any words or thought of ours can compass, 
this is the one essential significance of sacramental 
ordinances, 

It is to be particularly observed that in the process 
of uniting with Christ, and especially in the covenanted 
and supernatural side of it, the more distinctively divine 
side of the action, what is dealt with is not the individual 
primarily as individual, but the individual as enabled to 
participate, and as participating, in what is primarily a 
corporate privilege or estate. It is matter of little 
moment for the present purpose whether the Church is 
spoken of, under spatial figure, as the place or region 
of the Spirit; or whether it is spoken of more directly as 
the presence and working of the Spirit, as being expressly 
and actually the Spirit Himself. There is a “region of” 
the Spirit ; and the form of phrase is too indispensable, for 
many purposes, to be set aside; but the region of the Spirit 
consists really not of local spaces but of living persons: 
it is within personal spirits, which as such are capable 
of Spiritual presence, that the Spirit is characteristically 
manifested as what He really is. The Church, then, is, 
in fact, the Spirit of Christ, communicated to the 
spirits of those who recognize, and believe in, His 
Person and work; it is the disciples of Christ, made 
Christian in very deed by participation in the Spirit 
of Christ. “I believe in the Holy Ghost,’ and “I believe 
in the Holy Catholic Church,” are claims which, if fully 
enough understood, are in fact almost theologically conter- 
minous, differing chiefly as different relations, or aspects, 
of one truth. Such a district or region, such a status or 
privilege, (call it which you will,) the spiritual extension, 
throughout Humanity, of the Incarnation,—itself a result 
which necessarily follows from the Incarnation,—is the 
Divine mode for the enlightening and purifying of in- 
dividual personalities ; and this is His Church; the Church 


260 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


whose whole conception, meaning, and condition, is 
essentially and always “ Spirit.” 

But while it is important to insist that the individual is 
dealt with in and through the corporate Life, which in the 
New Testament is spoken of as the Body of Christ, or as 
Christ ;! it is the effect of participation in the corporate 
life upon the individual, with which we are now immedi- 
ately concerned. 

The actual relation, then, covenanted and Christian, of 
the individual personality with Christ, begins with Baptism. 
The primary conception of Baptism is admission or incor- 
poration. It is possible to say a great deal in the way of 
exposition of Baptism, while it is mainly regarded as 
enrolment within the organization of a society. But it is 
obvious, to any theological mind, that this by itself, though 
true, is a superficial view of Baptism. In any case indeed, if 
it is enrolment within a society, the significance of the 
enrolment must naturally depend upon the meaning 
and scope of the society. And in this case, more than in 
any other, the character of the society is everything. In- 
corporation into the Church, regarded as a society, is in 
fact only the outward mode of expressing incorporation 
into the Church, regarded as a spiritual sphere and 
capacity of personal being ; incorporation into the Church, 
which is the Spirit; and which, being the Spirit, is Christ,— 
the personal, spiritual, realization of Christ. It is this into 
which Baptism is the divinely commanded, and covenanted, 
initiation. Membership of Christ, with all that the word 
membership, in the fulness of its proper meaning, is 
capable of suggesting: membership of Christ, formally 
conferred by an act which is spoken of as representing, in 
divine significance, a rebirth; this has been the central 
idea by means of which, even to the minds of children and 


1 Cp. e.g. Eph. i. 22, 23 with Eph. iv. 13, and Rom. xii. 5 with 1 Cor. xii, 
12 and John. xv. 5. 


Sa egg en ee ed ae ey ee ee 





eR Re ae 
Se 





x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 261 


catechumens, the purpose and character of Baptism have 
been, from the beginning, explained. 

The word rebirth is more than the accidental metaphor 
ofa moment. It is rather a solemn challenge to spiritual 
intelligence, calling upon it to consider carefully what natural 
birth involves to the child that is born ; and warning it not 
to expect, on any other basis, to understand what it is meant 
to understand in the profoundly simple outward experience 
of Baptism. The rebirth is the establishment of a relation- 
ship with Christ, which can only be understood in terms of 
the material relationship of flesh and blood with the 
limitations and disabilities of the nature of Adam. Each 
in its way is a first entrance upon possibilities of conscious- 
ness which may, and ought to, grow very far from their 
earliest forms of realization. As the one is the earliest 
initiation into the various possible experiences of this 
physical life, with its imperfect mental and quasi-spiritual 
corollaries,—all those pathetic witnesses and demands which 
it just dimly feels, but cannot possibly satisfy ; so the other 
is the earliest initiation into all those developing spiritual 
possibilities which, in one word, are “ Christ.” 

Even when Baptism comes to be thought and spoken of 
in conscious distinction from what we call Confirmation, 
this one great primary phrase “rebirth” is the one that is 
most characteristically attached to it,—along with the 
thought of symbolic cleansing, or remission, which the 
outward use of water immediately typifies. It is indeed 
the proper phrase for the earliest initiation into life; even 
though the meaning of the life is not yet realized,—the 
fulness therefore of what is ultimately implied in rebirth 
is not yet attained,—until that life is consummated in the 
vision of the glory of God. This is an ambiguity which 
few spiritual phrases can escape. Their meaning is 
never quite complete till the final consummation. And 
yet, from the first, their meaning, though in a sense 


262 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP, 


provisional, conditional, unconsummated, is itself clear and 
uminous. 

In this case, however, there is a certain additional element 
of ambiguity, due to the fact that Baptism, as standing alone, 
does not constitute the whole initiation into the privileges 
and prerogatives of Christian life. This initiation, as we 
see in the New Testament, included also the laying on of 
Apostolic hands—the symbol of inclusion within the range 
of the mighty Pentecostal blessing; the consummation of 
the right to the de facto exercise of the prerogatives of the 
Christian franchise; the ordination, as it were, to the 
activity of the universal priesthood. Without this the 
initiation into Pentecostal privilege was not yet complete. 
In the early generations of the Church it is probable that 
Baptism was not conferred without this; or at least that 
such separation was rather the exception than the rule; and 
consequently that the word Baptism, in its normal use— 
apart from attention called to a special separation—implies 
and includes the “laying on of hands” as constituting, 
along with the “cleansing by water,” a single unity of 
initiation. Whatever practical advantages may have been 
gained in other directions by the later usage, according to 
which confirmation is postponed for many years after 
baptism, it is plain that a certain degree of theological 
ambiguity is introduced whenever the two are regarded 
as completely apart from each other. For we then are 
called upon to give, and give with full completeness, in 
their separation, a rationale of the two ceremonies which in 
fact require and imply one another, because they are really 
parts of an initiation, which is, in theological idea, one 
whole. 

This is hardly the place to attempt to enter, with 
minuteness, into the proper exposition of Baptism as 
contrasted with the Laying on of hands, or of Laying on 
of hands as contrasted with Baptism. There must always 


ee et : 
Seb oe Sa 


[x. THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 263 


be, for the reason just given, a certain element about it of 
practical, if not logical, inexactness. But meanwhile it 
will hardly be denied that just as, when the Baptism by 
water begins to be spoken of in patristic writings in con- 
trast with unction and the laying on of hands, the word 
“regeneration” is the word which (along with cleansing 
or remission) is more and more reserved as the character- 
istic word for the exposition of it: even though such 
Baptism does not really exhaust, by itself, the conceptions 
inherent in “regeneration” as fully explained: so both 
in early patristic literature, and in scripture itself, the 
laying on of hands, when viewed in separation from 
Baptism, is characteristically identified with the gift, once 
for all, of the Pentecostal Spirit. Whatever margin there 
may be of practical inexactness in the sharp denial of the 
Pentecostal gift to anything but the Laying on of hands; 
(and indeed the sharp antitheses of logic are seldom at 
all points applicable to anything so complex and living as 
spiritual experience): it is plain that the true principle 
expressed in such denial is deeper and more significant 
than the dangers of inexactness ; for the denial is expressed) 
with verbal emphasis, in the words of scripture itself. } 

On the other hand, it may be said that—in whatever 
sense, or degree, the power of practically exercising 
spiritual rights (whether some or all) may remain, for a 
time, in abeyance,—the essential right to all rights is, from 
the moment of Baptism, already there. Whoever has 
been admitted into Christ has been admitted, implicitly 
at least, into all the fulness of the powers of the Spirit of 
Christ. This may be concretely expressed, on the practical 
side, by saying that every baptized person has zpso facto,— 
not so much the inherent right to dispense with confirma- 
tion, as the inherent right to be confirmed. And such in- 


1 “For as yet He was fallen upon none of them: only they had been 
baptized,” Acts viii. 16 ; ¢J. also viii. 17, 18, and xix. 6. 


264 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


herent right carries with it the inherent capacity, when the 
“Laying on of hands” zs, zz the providence of God, withheld 
and impossible, of all which the Laying on of hands, in the 
normal course, would have either symbolized or conferred.1 
To speak of the inherent right of the baptized to receive 
confirmation, is far more in accordance with scripture, as 
well as with all Church conception and practice, than to 
think that they may dispense with being confirmed. 

For the present, however, we are concerned not with the 
precise definition of the contrast between the two, when 
they are, more or less abnormally (speaking from the 
point of view of the main theological idea) established in 
permanent separation from each other; so much as with 
the significance of both, when regarded together as con- 
stituting the total of the initiation into the powers of the 
Christian life. As we look at them so, it is more than 
ever clear that everything is in terms of Spirit, spiritual. 
Admission into Christ carries with it the indwelling 
presence of the Spirit of Christ: which presence is itself 
an admission into the full de facto exercise of spiritual 
rights, a capacity for the use, and for the intelligence, of 
spiritual powers. The Spirit is neither a substitute for, 
nor an addition to, Christ. The Spirit, in His fulness, is 
the fulness of the presence of Christ, which is the presence 
of God. The Spirit, in all the rudimentary stages of His 
realization, is the rudimentary realization, in the personal 
consciousness, of the presence of Christ, which is God. 
Given indeed in the beginning, and given once for all :— 
so that His gift or presence is rather a reality to be 
believed in than a possibility to be achieved; He is 


1 Thus, the De rebapitsmate (printed with the works of St Cyprian), a 
treatise which exceedingly magnifies Confirmation, yet says, in reference to 
the interval between Baptism and the laying on of hands in Acts viii. 16, 
‘Quod hodierna quoque die non potest dubitari esse usitatum, et evenire 
solitum, ut plerique post baptisma sine impositione manus episcopi de seculo 
exeant, e¢ tamen pro perfectis fidelibus habentur.” See Dr Mason on Zhe 
relation of Conjirmation to Baptism, 123 sgq. 





SS en ee ee ne 


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x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 265 


nevertheless, step by step, in slow process very gradually 
realized, as well in the consciousness of experience as in 
the aspiration of thought. But it is essential to Christian 
faith to believe that what is thus so gradually realized 
(and so very far, within our experience, from its consum- 
mation) is not something merely which may possibly 
some day come to be, but something which in underlying 
—if undeveloped—teality, already, before God, is. In- 
corporation into Christ, which (in its full sense) is the 
consummation, is (as gift, as right, and as inchoate fact,) the 
basis and the beginning of Christian life: and incorpora- 
tion into Christ involves that indwelling presence of 
Christ’s Spirit, of which all spiritual prerogatives and 
powers are but natural corollaries. | 

But if the initiation is once for all; and all that follows, 
up to the very throne of God, is but realization of what 
the initiation implicitly contained; the religious life of a 
Christian is also, and perhaps even more conspicuously, 
conditioned and supplied by the perpetually recurring 
sacrament of the Holy Communion. Baptism and the 
Laying on of hands are the conditions necessarily pre- 
cedent to admission to the life of communion; not by an 
act of arbitrary Church discipline, imposing conditions of 
access where Christ imposed none; but because the 
Church so understands the scriptural and primitive 
doctrine of the initiation into Christ by these things, that 
she cannot but recognize that, where these are neglected, 
the spiritual conditions are not yet fulfilled, which would 
authorize her to impart, or enable the would-be recipients 
with due reverence and effect to receive, such further 
gifts as can only be what they are, within their own 
proper atmosphere of Spirit. 

The first thing which strikes us, in our present context, 
in reference to the subject of the Holy Communion, is 
this; that its central thought and aim is (once more) 


266 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY  [CHAP. 


reality of personal union with Christ. The material ex- 
perience in terms of which this reality is now presented, 
is quite different from that in the light of which Baptism 
was explained. But the central aim and ideal is the 
same. If Baptism corresponds to the birth which origin- 
ates, the Holy Communion is the food which sustains 
and develops, life. As birth and as nurture, they repre- 
sent between them the whole process, from the cradle to 
the fullest maturity of living power. And as the birth is 
initiation, once for all, into Christ, in effective right and 
possibility: so the nurture is meant to be development, 
more and more, into a fuller and fuller realization of 
voluntary self-identity, of character and spirit, with 
Christ. 

The Holy Communion teaches this, with signal 
emphasis, in terms of food. And the food is expressly 
defined as the Flesh and Blood of Christ. Now while 
it is clearly beyond our present scope to enter upon any 
task so immense as the general exposition of Eucharistic 
doctrine, there are some two or three things which it may 
concern us to point out in respect of these terms. Our 
first point, then, is this: that the flesh and blood plainly 
express, and are meant to emphasize, His Humanity. 
Flesh and blood stand as the constituent elements, on 
the visible and palpable side, of that Humanity in which 
He was self-expressed. They stand as its outward and, 
so to say, measurable test; the pledge and guarantee 
of its reality. The gift of His flesh and blood is the gift 
of His Humanity. To share them is to share Humanity, 
as it was in Him. Into this context the comparison 
naturally fits between Christ and Adam ;—between the 
meaning and consequences of being part and parcel of 
the flesh and blood of Adam, and the meaning and 
consequences of becoming genuine partakers of the flesh 
and blood of Christ. It is the infusion of the sap of a 


= sie 





eee ee Pe. ee Se ee ey 


x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 267 


new, because renewed, nature. “For as in Adam all die, 
so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” + 

The second point is that the flesh and blood express 
the humanity, as, to some extent, in general, so particularly 
in one most significant reference. It is the Humanity of 
Christ especially in its atoning aspect, as the cancelling 
of the past, the perfection of penitence, the consummation 
of the sacrifice of holiness by which sin was conquered 
and destroyed._ The gift of His flesh and blood is, then, 
the gift of participation in the very instruments and 
capacities of the sacrifice, sin-crushing and_ victorious. 
It is the internal reception and realization of that 
triumphant goodness, in Human nature, of which Calvary 
was the necessary condition and mode; and it is in terms 
which expressly recall and emphasize Calvary. It is part 
of the self-identification of the recipient with the Sacrifice, 
the growing assimilation of the self, in inwardness of 
character and will, with the victorious Spirit of the 
Atonement. 

If this is, in the most general terms, the nature of the 
gifts received, the mode of receiving them is in itself 
extremely significant. They are received by eating and 
by drinking. They are fed upon: as the food which 
is taken up into the body is converted into the strength, 
and is the indispensable condition of the life, of the body 
into which it is taken. There is something most im- 
pressive in the reiterated use of the language of eating, 
in reference to spiritual reception and assimilation. 
There is nothing in the least accidental about the use 
of the language,—as though it were just a floating image 
which might serve for the illustration of the moment, 
and no more. On the contrary, its use is persistent and 
determined. As we dwell upon it, we are compelled to 
realize that the relation, in physical experience, between 


1 : Cor. xv. 22. 


268 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP, 


food and the life of the body,—a relation the proper 
mystery of which is veiled to us by the exceeding 
familiarity of the facts——is not so much an_ ultimate 
truth of fact, as it were for its own sake, as it is an 
analogue or parable, suggesting, and meant to suggest, 
to the thoughts of men, a relation largely parallel with, 
and yet far transcending, itself. Itis so from end to end 
of the Bible. The prohibition, the temptation, and the 
fall, are altogether in terms of this. It is as food that 
the knowledge of good and evil is assimilated. “And 
when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, 
and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree 
was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit 
thereof and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband 
with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both 
were opened.” . . . “And now lest he put forth his hand, 
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 
therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of 
Eden.” The manna in the wilderness is food of privileged 
and distinctive life, bread sent down from heaven to be the 
life of the people of God. The Passover lamb is still 
more definitely a food of sharply distinctive privilege. 
No alien or uncircumcised person might venture to come 
near to eat thereof* On the other hand, to neglect it, 
not being disqualified, is to be cut off from the people 
of the Lord? It is, within a certain area or atmosphere, 
imperative : even while, outside that range, it is impossible. 
The distinctive mark is partaking of an appointed food.* 
Whole volumes of prehistoric and extrahistoric instinct 
and usage, of a strictly religious kind, are summed up 
and sanctified in Levitical ordinances like these. The 
foulness of eating foulness; the strength of eating 
strength; the sanctity of eating sacrifice: inveterate 


1 Gen. iii. 6, 7, 22, 23. 2 Exod. xii. 43, 48. 
3 Num, ix. 13. * Cp. also Prov. ix. 1-5; Dan. i, 15. 


X.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 269 


instincts like these, in a thousand forms, lie behind all 
the legal distinctions of “clean” and “unclean” food, as 
well as such special types as the Passover and the Manna. 
The idea of absolute distinctions between foods,—the 
materialistic interpretation of such usages as these,—was 
only for a time, and has been done away. But the 
instinct itself which lay behind the materialistic concep- 
tions has not been done away, but has been taken up and 
consecrated anew by Christ for Christians for ever. Long 
before any special symbolic or ceremonial method was 
revealed of obeying a requirement so staggering, the 
requirement had been announced in words of sweeping 
strength by Jesus Christ ;—words which almost literally 
broke His society to pieces ;—“ Verily, verily I say unto 
you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth 
My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life : and I will 
raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed, 
and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh 
and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him. As 
the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the 
Father ; so he that eateth Me, he also shall live because of 
Me.”! Christians, to be Christians, must absolutely “live 
upon” Christ. This is an essential requirement, which 
neither needs, nor admits of, qualification. It is after the 
enunciation of this essential principle that a special method 
is provided of a symbolic or ceremonial kind: which 
thenceforward, no doubt, represents the essential require- 
ment, just exactly so far as a practice, in the ceremonial 
order of things, is capable of identification with a 
requirement itself essentially of the Spirit, spiritual. “Jesus 
took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and He gave to the 
disciples, and said, Take eat; this is My body. And He 
took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, 


1 John vi. 53-57. 


270 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


Drink ye all of it; for this is My blood of the covenant, 
which is shed for many unto remission of sins,” 4 

Thenceforward, this bread and this cup represent, and 
even—just so far as that is possible for anything in the 
external and material order—constitute and are, the 
central symbol and the central realization of the Church’s 
distinctive life. “The cup of blessing, which we bless, is 
it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread 
which we break, is it not a communion of the body of 
Christ? seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one 
body ; for we all partake of the one bread.” * 

We notice, then, about all this, first, with what 
emphatic insistence the essential spiritual reality is 
expressed in terms of material imagery or metaphor. 
All this tremendous language about eating and drinking, 
about flesh and blood, while it emphasizes the reality 
of the identification of the human nature of the com- 
municants with the human nature of the Christ; is itself 
a clear repudiation of any form of religion, which, in the ° 
name of spirit, and for the sake of a (supposed) higher 
standard of spiritualistic aspiration, would ignore the 
inseparable relation of body with spirit, or make any 
ultimate antithesis between spirit and body. God would 
not have taken humanity, if He had not taken body. The 
body, though not the whole, nor the inner meaning of 
humanity, is yet the symbol and guarantee of the reality 
of the humanity which it embodies. It is in the body that 
the inward self is expressed. The inner self is that which 
characterizes the body, and as body it is met, and 
known, and touched. It is expressly on the bodily side, 
and in terms of body,—that body which it was His 
humiliation to take, that body which was the avenue to 
Him of temptation and suffering and dying, and which was, 
for that very reason, the instrument of His victory over sin 


1 Matt. xxvi. 26-28. 71 Cor. x. 16, 17. 


x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 271 


and death ; that He is ceaselessly giving to each one of 
us His Humanity, to be the food and nurture of our life, 
to be the effective sanctification and purifying of every 
impulse in us both of body and spirit. Our spirit cannot 
be sanctified without our body. The spirit that does not 
dominate body, making it, in every fibre and motion, the 
instrument and expression of spirit, is not effective or 
victorious spirit. So emphatic is the language of scripture 
on this, the bodily or material, side, that those who adhere 
closely to it are perhaps in more danger of an over- 
materialistic conception of sacramental life, than of explain- 
ing sacramental reality away as an encouragement merely, 
in the form of mental imagination or spiritual idea, 

And yet the language contains within itself the most 
express warning against any interpretation which is 
primarily material. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the 
flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken 
unto you are spirit, and are life.””1 Though the gifts 
imparted be in terms of flesh and of blood, yet true 
sacramental communion after all is communion, not of 
outward action, so much as of inward reality, not -of flesh, 
so much as of spirit. Or, let us say, it is communion of 
flesh in the second instance, of flesh as, on the one hand, a 
means, and on the other, a result, of Spirit. Sacramental 
communion is vainly material after all, if it is not con- 
ceived of mainly as an aspiration and growing on towards 
oneness,—not mechanically, so much, of flesh, as inherently 
of character and of spirit, with the Crucified. It involves 
indeed the idea of true oneness of body, body spiritualized 
through Spirit. But this, so far from being the primary 
truth, is itself a consequence which outflows, as con- 
sequence, from the reflection of Christ in the will and 
character, from the identification with Christ of the spiritual 
self, 

4 John vi. 63. 


272 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


Indeed, any interpretation which was primarily material, 
would really militate against the entire conception of 
the Pentecostal Church, which, through whatever details 
of experience or method, is itself essentially, everywhere 
and always, Spirit. cclestca proprie et principaliter Ipse 
est Spiritus. There is nothing in the Church whose proper 
meaning is not Spirit. Moreover, by taking a certain 
part (and fundamental part too) of Church experience 
away from the region of Spirit, such an interpretation 
would set up a distinction and antithesis, between “ Christ” 
on the one hand, and on the other “ Spirit”: whereas the 
Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and it is in Spirit that. 
Christ is realized. The Spirit is the method of Christ’s 
presence. Incarnate God is made real within as Spirit. 
If on the one hand we are accustomed to such language 
as “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,’1 “As many of 
you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ,” ? 
“TI do count them but dung that I may gain Christ,” 
“For to me to live is Christ,” * “Christ, who is our life,” 5 
“My little children of whom I am again in travail until 
Christ be formed in you”:® on the other hand, these 
things find—not their antithesis, nor yet a rival influence, 
but their echo and their interpretation in such passages 
as “Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that 
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath 
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ 
is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit 
is life because of righteousness.”” “Hereby we know that 
He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us.”8 
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost”® are not three 
distinct and separable things, but three relations or aspects 

1 Rom. xiii. 14. 2 Gal. iii. 27. 3 Phil. iii, 8. 


* Phil. i, 21. ; 5 Col. iii. 4. 6 Gal. iv. 19. 
? Rom. viii. 9-10, 8 y John iii. 24. * 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 


x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 273 


of the one Christian blessing,—which is the presence, in 
the Spirit, of the Incarnate revelation of the Holiness of 
the Eternal God. 

The Holy Communion is the perpetually fresh and 
fresh imparting, to the congregation, and to every qualified 
individual member of the congregation, of the Humanity 
of Christ; that is to say of that Humanity, divinely 
spiritual, which, perfect in its own inherent holiness, has 
through the consummation, unto death, of the sacrifice 
of contrition, felt and crushed the whole accumulated 
power of sin. 

The sphere of the realization of all this is not primarily 
material but spiritual. It is of course possible to be over- 
materialistic in interpretation of these things. It is not 
only those sacramentalists, whose habit of practice and 
thought tends to emphasize over-much the fact of observ- 
ance as observance, (as though all the invisible blessing 
must needs follow, materially, upon material actions duly 
performed,) who have failed to appreciate the spiritual 
atmosphere, in which, and through which alone, these 
things of the Spirit are realized. In theory, indeed, it 
may be hoped that this particular form of sacramental 
materialism is rare. But the tendencies towards it are 
very insidious, And it can hardly be doubted that, in 
practice, there is often still a very considerable element 
of this lack of spirituality in many even of those who 
would, in theory, most sincerely repudiate it, and who 
are really endeavouring, not without success, to rise in 
their sacramental worship, above it. But indeed there 
is something of the same mistake in all those who, 
however devout their communions, so conceive of the 
communicant life as if (on whatever theological exposition 
or theory) it could continue to be a thing of value, or a 
thing of joy, in itself—apart from its proper effect of 
so identifying Christ with the communicant and the 

Ss 


274 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY ~ [CHAP. 


communicant with Christ, that the presence of Christ in 
the communicant would be progressively manifest in his 
temper and character and life. The communicant life is 
not either a privilege or a joy, if it is not a real seeking 
after, and finding, Christ Himself: if it is not a develop- 
ment of the process of translation which may be equally 
described as the “forming of Christ within,”* or (after 
“bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience 
of Christ”*) that attainment of fullgrownness which is 
“the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” :* 
that is to say, in other words, as Christ within the self, 
or as the self within Christ. No consciousness of the ex- 
ceedingly childlike imperfectness of our own communions 
ought to blind us to the true meaning of Communion with 
Christ, or persuade us to acquiesce in either interpretation, 
or aspiration, which is less than the very truth of God. The 
life of communion is a life of progressive identification,— 
of the personal consciousness and character,—with the 
character, and will, and being, of Christ, who is God. 

It is perhaps another instance of the same forgetfulness 
that everything in the Pentecostal Church is in Spirit, 
spiritual: when theologians insist, as if it were a principle 
of theological exposition, that the gifts given in the 
Bread and Wine of the Sacrament, must be explained as 
the Body and Blood of Christ as they were at the moment 
of Calvary. What they were at the moment of Calvary 
they have not been again since the Resurrection, and are 
not, anyhow or anywhere, now. What is given in the 
Eucharist is what is, and not what is not. Calvary indeed 
is an inalienable element in what they are. The thought 
of Calvary is expressly recalled and emphasized in the 
terms in which they are given. But they are themselves 
not a material but a spiritual gift. The value of the 
material is not its material but its spiritual value. It 


1 Gal. iv. 19 22 Cor. x. 5. 8 Eph. iv, 13. 


x.] THE CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS 275 


is the Body and Blood not as slain in death; but as, 
through the fact of death, victoriously alive. It is the 
Humanity triumphant, perfect, consummated in Spirit. 
It is no exception to the universal principle, that the 
Pentecostal Church zs Ilvetya; and therefore that every- 
thing in the Church is what it is only within the region, 
and informing principle, of Spirit. “It is the Spirit that 
quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that 
I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” 


Enough has perhaps been said to show, for our present 
purpose, that everything which was said in the last chapter 
about the consummation of human personality only in and 
through personal union with the Spirit of the Incarnate, 
is itself sustained, to the utmost extent of its meaning, 
by the whole sacramental conception, which is the special 
characteristic of the Church of Christ. The sacramental 
system not merely agrees with, and corroborates, it: it 
is, in slightly varied language and relation, essentially 
the very same thing. The fundamental truth that the 
consummation of a created personality is his personal accord 
with, and true reflection of, the being of the all-inclusive 
God,—itself a truth as necessary to philosophical thought 
as it is cardinal to theology,—is embodied and consecrated 
in the Church in the most solemn and tremendous of 
ordinances. 

And the bearing of all this upon the exposition of 
the doctrine of atonement will be obvious. The atone- 
ment is not to be conceived of as an external transaction, 
from which God returns, armed, by virtue of it, with a 
newly-acquired right or faculty of “not punishing” those 
whom He was “obliged” to punish before: the atonement 
is a real achievement of perfect sinlessness even in the 
perfectly sinful: it is a real transformation of the conditions 
and possibilities of Humanity, which, being consummated 


276 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [cuar. x. 


first in the Person of Jesus Christ, becomes, through Him, 
a personal reality in all those whose personality is ulti- 
mately determined and constituted by the progressive 
realization, in them, of His Spirit,—which is, in its final 
consummation, their absolute identity, in Spirit, with 
Him. 

“Look, Father, look on His anointed face, 

And only look on us as found in Him :” 


These are words which really touch, as they have, by 
very general instinct, been accepted as touching, the 
heart of the true theology of the Atonement. We are 
not, and never can be, our true very selves, save as we 
really come to be “in Him, and He in us.” Everything 
turns, in the exposition of atonement, upon the reality 
of our personal identification with Him: just as every- 
thing, in the entire sacramental system of the Church, 
symbolizes and signifies, and works together to con- 
summate, that same personal self-identity with Him,— 
of the Church, and of each several spirit within Her,— 
as the one central reality of faith, and aspiration, and 
living experience, | 


CHAPTER XI 
RECAPITULATION 


THE doctrine, then, of atonement through Jesus Christ, 
the doctrine of the redemption of sinful man, means a 
real change, not a fictitious one, in the man who is 
redeemed. It means a change no less portentous, in 
himself, than the change from being personally identified 
with sin, to being personally identified with the very 
Divine perfection of holiness. 

All forms of theory which are content to explain the 
Atonement as a transaction, however pathetic or august 
in itself, which has its proper completeness altogether 
outside the personality of the redeemed, are found to be 
hopelessly inadequate, as well to the truth of theological 
doctrine, as to the truth of human experience and reason. 

The inadequacy which is inherent in all such theories 
we have endeavoured to measure by tracing back to its 
roots, and examining the implications which are contained 
in, one of the most familiar, if not authoritative, of such 
forms of theory. To describe the atonement as a waiving, 
for a consideration, of punishment which, in justice, ought 
to have been inflicted, whilst it may serve as a sort of 
superficial first introduction of the infantine consciousness 
to the mutual relation of such conceptions as sin, punish- 
ment, and pardon; can, as a serious explication of God’s 
dealing with man, issue only in intolerable untruth. And 
if the consideration for which punishment is unjustly 


remitted, is capable of being described as the unjust 
277 


278 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


punishment of some other, who has no connection with 
the guilt, no wonder that the transaction, so conceived 
or described, profoundly shocks the conscience of godlike 
men. If this is all that we have to say about the Christian 
doctrine of atonement, much that is deepest and best in 
human nature will continue to cry out against it with a 
cry which will certainly not be silenced or appeased. 

But we passed beyond this first childish conception of 
atonement, not so much by treating the conception itself 
with contempt, as by finding, on analysis, to how much it 
really bore witness beyond its own first imperfect state- 
ment of itself. We recognized that a vindictive punisher, 
who will not be satisfied without punishing somebody, is 
no part of the diviner truth of punishment. If in cases 
in which punishment has failed of its proper object and 
character—cases which we dare not deny or exclude as 
impossible,—it is capable of acquiring a character with 
some superficial resemblance to this; at all events in its 
proper truth, when it has not morally failed, punishment is 
itself a method, or stage, towards penitence. The consum- 
mation of its proper work is not to be looked for so much 
either in the form of eternal damnation, on the one side, or 
of cancelling of penalty on the other; rather, in proportion 
to its true working, it is itself superseded and absorbed. 
It becomes an aspect or mode of something which is 
beyond, yet is characterized by, itself. The proper goal of 
penal pain is the consummation of penitence. 

And penitence, when we examined it, we found to be an 
attitude towards sin,—on the part indeed necessarily of © 
one whose nature was burdened with the disabilities, and 
was accessible to the insulting challenge, of sin ;—which 
yet, in its true ideal completeness of meaning, was nothing 
less than the attitude of the absolute holiness of God. In 
its ideal significance, which alone is the measure of what it 
really signifies, we found it to be only a possibility of the 


Sen ats Tee MT? Eee 
= ae Tar eh ae 
SES Pe 


x1.] RECAPITULATION 279 


personally Sinless: even while it also was the only condi- 
tion on which the sin of the sinful could be really 
dissolved and destroyed. It was the indispensable 
necessity of the personally sinful. It was only conceivable 
as a property of the personally sinless. 

And meanwhile if, whether with logic or without it, we 
so far bowed to the universal voice of all Christian experi- 
ence as to assume that there is some reality of penitence, 
we found that, on the assumption of reality of penitence, 
forgiveness ceased to wear its first aspect as either arbitrary, 
or purchased, favour; it became a spontaneous, inherent, 
necessary aspect of love: it was love’s natural embrace of 
that which was, or was capable of being, really lovable; 
until, if it were conceivable that penitence should be ever 
consummated perfectly, forgiveness would more and more 
completely lose all its distinctive aspect as “forgiveness” ; 
—it would more and more be merged and lost in the 
fulness of the love of God, embracing no longer sinners 
though they were sinful, but saints because they were 
sanctified, embracing the very living beauty of holiness 
in those who were really once more themselves holy and 
beautiful. 

Then, turning aside to notice that Jesus Christ was no 
irrelevant third between God and man; not another God 
besides the God who was Holiness and was sinned against; 
nor another man besides the man who had sinned, and was 
bound in sin; but identical, potentially at least, with man, 
that is, with the whole range of humanity,—as He was 
absolutely identical with the whole content and meaning 
of the word “God”; we saw that in Him, that is, in 
human nature, become the expression of Deity, (yet, still 
expressing even Deity humanly, and remaining, none the 
less, human nature,) all the impossible conditions, which we 
had seen before to be necessary though impossible, were in 
fact satisfied to the full, The impossible burthen of all 


280 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


that the ideal consummation of penitence had been seen to 
involve, was here completely realized, in a suffering, in a 
holiness, in a penitential consummation of holiness, which 
though Divinely perfect, were none the less perfectly 
human. How absolutely is the whole world’s record 
transformed, by the righteousness of One, quite perfectly 
righteous, Man! 

We saw, revealed in Him, the meaning of a life of 
perfectly obedient dependence on God, which is the 
realization of human holiness, the crown of the proper 
meaning of the life of man. And we saw, revealed in Him, 
the meaning of penal death: death which, by its very 
inherent contradiction of all that life means or demands, 
death which, in its awful surrender both of body and spirit, 
is itself the consummation of the sinner’s contrition,—the 
final struggle with, the final victory over, the last and most 
tremendous grapple (because it is indeed the death grapple) 
of, sin. When the death is consummated, in that last 
terrible surrender inch by inch of all that sin could touch, 
or challenge, or hurt, sin itself was crushed, and was 
dead. 

And all this, we insisted, was no merely past transaction, 
affecting, quite irrespectively of ourselves or our attitude 
towards it, the principles upon which God deals with us. 
No one could imagine this who keeps steadily in mind 
the truth that the word God means always Righteousness 
and Truth, and the Love which is the Love of Righteous- 
ness and Truth. Nothing can ever affect God’s relation 
towards us, which does not affect the relation towards 
us of Righteousness and of Truth. If God loves us, they 
love us. If they love us not, neither does God. God 
deals with us, loves us, as is true, and as is righteous. 
Bethlehem and Nazareth, and the lake-side in Galilee, 
and the courts of the Temple in Jerusalem, and Geth- 
semane, and Calvary, all these and the awful scenes 


Se 


x1.] RECAPITULATION 281 


which belong to these names, were indeed objective and 
historical realities first, before us, and without us: and 
yet the work of atonement through them is not yet 
consummated, until we too are ourselves in relation with 
it, and it is a living fact for, and in, ourselves. 

This translation of the objective into the subjective, 
the realizing within our personal being of the things 
which were wrought without that they might be realized 
within, finds its most natural beginning and expression 
whenever the human thought sincerely contemplates, and 
the human heart is moved and drawn in sincere love 
towards, the work of Calvary, and the Person of Christ. 
Contemplation and love do wonderfully transform the 
very selves of those in whom they are real. Yet even 
contemplation and love, profoundly important though 
they are, are terms too superficial and precarious to 
express, with any real approach to accuracy, the nature 
of the personal relation of Christians to Christ. Or at 
all events contemplation and love, as we know or can 
conceive them in any other context, are inadequate. 
Their basis, their capacity, their very meaning, must be 
unique, before we can receive them as adequate expres- 
sions for that transcendent relation which is to overshadow 
and to transform the very meaning of what we ourselves 
are, 

And so we passed on to consider, not as a glorious 
sequel to the atonement, but rather as an integral part 
of its meaning, a necessary condition without which it 
would remain unconsummated after all, the doctrine of 
the Holy Ghost; that perpetual extension, or Spiritual 
realization, of the Incarnation,—of Nazareth and of 
Calvary,—which is the breath and life, the meaning and 
the being, of the Pentecostal Church. The Church of 
Christ is much more than a sentimental emotion, a tribute 
of thought or affection, however sincere in itself, towards 


282 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


the Person of Christ. It is the indwelling and overruling 
presence of the Person of Christ in the Person of the 
Spirit, characterizing and constituting the inmost reality 
of the personality of man. 

Something we ventured to say in the direction of 
explaining, or making intelligible to our own imagination 
and reason, the great Christian doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit, revealed to the Church as the Divine mode of 
the continuance and consummation of the life and death 
of Jesus Christ, which continuance and consummation 
constitutes the Church. Even when we tried to think 
of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Being of God, we 
ventured (without transcending the modest limits of that 
true Christian agnosticism which most earnestly disclaims 
the attempt to know fully what it is manifest that we 
cannot, as men, fully know) to make, at least, an especial 
connection between the thought of the Divine Being, 
as emanating Spirit, and that Response to Himself 
which any real intelligence of His Being compels (as 
it were) His creatures to render back, as reflection or 
echo, to Himself; that response of which the poetry of 
the poet, the harmony of the musician, the symmetry 
of the architect, the peaceful triumphs of the statesman, 
the atmosphere of love and gratitude wrought out for 
itself by the love of the Christian worker, are a parable 
and earnest. 

We ventured to suggest that the Spirit Himself is 
primarily revealed as the Spirit, or perpetuity of inward 
presence, of the Incarnate, who is the revelation of God: 
that it was the master-fact of the Incarnation of God 
which dominated all the theological language and thought 
of the Epistles and the New Testament throughout: that 
to think of the Spirit as the Spirit of the Incarnate is 
to see that He is the revelation of the true meaning and 
character, the destiny and goal, of humanity, just as truly 





‘ 
f 
Mf 
7 
. 


aa 


eee ee es rT 


Dh a ee 


ae Se ee 
So ay ee ee 


x1.] | RECAPITULATION 283 


as He is the revelation, within man, of Deity: and that 
this real presence of the Incarnate as Spirit, constituting 
the inmost personality of man, is the reality in man of 
that consummated victory of the penitence, or righteous- 
ness, of the “ Atonement,” which was the culmination and 
end of Incarnation. 

For the reality of our own relation to the atonement, 
which is its consummation in respect of each one of us, 
everything unreservedly turns upon the reality of our 
identification, in spirit, with the Spirit of Jesus Christ 
In proportion to our essential distinctness, and remoteness, 
from Him, is our distinctness, and remoteness, from the 
consummation of Atonement. But in proportion as the 
aspiring language of the Christian Scripture and the 
Christian Liturgy is realized; in proportion as it approaches 
towards the truth to say, of ourselves, that “we may ever- 
more dwell in Him, and He in us”; the fulness of that 
consummation of obedient and penitential holiness which 
constituted in Him a perfect atonement, is, by His Presence 
consummated also in ourselves, 

We are now hundreds of miles from the thought of 
vicarious punishment. Could anything be more grotesquely, 
or even blasphemously, irrelevant to our true meaning than 
the thought of an obstinate Punisher, who after venting His 
vengeance on an innocent substitute, should consent, 
because some one had suffered, to treat the wicked, untruly 
and unrighteously, as if they were what they are not? 
Even if, in a sense, we may consent to speak of vicarious 
penitence; yet it is not exactly vicarious. He indeed 
consummated penitence in Himself, before the eyes, and 
before the hearts, of men who were not penitent them- 
selves, But He did so, not in the sense that they were 
not to repent, or that His penitence was a substitute for 
theirs. He did so, not as a-substitute, not even as a 
delegated representative, but as that inclusive total of true 


284 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


Humanity, of which they were potentially, and were to 
learn to become, a part. He consummated penitence, not 
that they might be excused from the need of repenting, 
but that they might learn, in Him, their own true possi- 
bility of penitence. 

We were careful to avoid all semblance of the mistake 
of supposing that He was set up before men as a model 
mainly, ‘or an object lesson; as an example chiefly or 
pattern, to be studied, and loved, and followed. Such 
phrases are not indeed untrue,—when the things of which 
they speak have first become possible. But the union with 
Him which is offered, and which is necessary, to men, is 
something far beyond the power of human admiration, or 
imitation, or even desire. It is not by becoming like Him 
that men will approach towards incorporation with Him: 
but by result of incorporation with Him, received in faith 
as a gift, and in faith adored, and used, that they will 
become like Him. It is by the imparted gift, itself far 
more than natural, of literal membership in Him ; by the 
indwelling presence, the gradually disciplining and domin- 
ating influence, of His Spirit—which is His very Self 
within, and as, the inmost breath of our most secret being ; 
that the power of His atoning life and death, which is the 
power of divinely victorious holiness, can grow to be the 
very deepest reality of ourselves. 

Such identification with Christ of the very inmost 
personality of each several man, may sound at first, to 
man’s confused thought about himself, as if it were the 
surrender of the sovereign instincts and capacities which 
he fancies that his own self-conscious personality means. 
We have endeavoured therefore to show, in some detail, 
that the very opposite to this is true. By some analysis 
of the meaning of the claim which our self-consciousness 
makes to free will, to reason, and to capacity of loving,— 
the three most prominent strands in our familiar thought 





2 
4 . 
4 
2 
3 
3 
re 
\ 


eS ee 


x1.) RECAPITULATION 285 


of personality,—we endeavoured to make clear that, what- 
ever be the inherent witness to, or demand for, each of 
these three things in every human consciousness, there is 
not one of them which, as matter of fact, we properly 
possess. We only approximate towards the actual 
consummation of what we ourselves cannot but mean by 
each one of these three words, in proportion as we really 
are translated into Christ,and His Spirit is the ultimate 
reality of our own individual being. So far from surrender- 
ing the sovereignty of our proper personality by 
identification with Him; it is only in proportion to our 
reality of identification with Him, that we ever attain at 
all to that true sovereign freedom, and insight, and love, 
which are the essential truth of personality, the consumma- 
tion of the meaning of ourselves. 

And finally we felt that we were at least on ground 
altogether incontrovertible in insisting that this identifica- 
tion of the several self with Him, this sovereign and 
overruling presence of His Spirit within the hearts and 
lives of Christians, was at all events the doctrine and the 
claim which breathe through every line of the New 
Testament. It is the Spirit of Christ which constitutes the 
Pentecostal Church. The Church means nothing but 
this. It is the perpetuity of the Presence, it is the living 
Temple, of God Incarnate—no longer in the midst of, but 
within, men. And the whole sacramental system, that 
unique characteristic of the Church of Christ, wholly means, 
and is, this. It is only the materialistic misconceptions and 
misuse of sacraments by men, because their moods and 
minds, even on spiritual subjects, are so often other than 
spiritual, which could ever have given colour, for one 
moment, to that most paradoxical of accusations, that the 
sacraments are a screen, or substitute, for Christ ; or could 
have obscured, to any spiritual eye, the obvious fact that the 
sacraments simply and directly both mean, and are, the 


286 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY _ [cuap. x1. 


Divine methods of the Spirit of Christ,—constituting, as 
such, the progressive spiritual reality of those throughout 
the world, who are willing to have Christ for their life. 

It is Christ then who, in the fullest sense, zs our 
atonement, and our atonement is real in proportion to the 
reality of Christ in us. Our atonement is no merely 
past transaction: it is a perpetual presence; a present 
possibility, of the life and of the self, the consummation of 
which transcends thought and desire. It is a “power 
that worketh in us.” And the power is the power through 
Spirit, in Jesus Christ, of God. “Now unto Him that ‘is 
able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or 
think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto 
Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto 
all generations for ever and ever. Amen.” ? 


1 Eph. iii. 20, 23, 


CHAPTER XIll 
OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 


THERE is one line of thought more in reference to which 
it seems to be desirable that something should still be 
said. In a sense our exposition is finished. But what 
is the relation between our exposition on the one hand, 
and, on the other, our familiar experience? If the lines 
are even approximately right on which the doctrine of the 
Atonement has been explained, then the real meaning of 
the life of a Christian man, redeemed in Christ, as a member 
of Christ’s Body, is something of singular spiritual loftiness. 
He is a communicant, not ceremonially only, but vitally, 
and even visibly, living on Christ, and growing into the 
likeness and Spirit of Christ. Not in himself, -but in 
Christ, is the focus of his life. He is himself the inspired 
reflection of Another. He is a Saint, in whose face, and 
in whose life, the very lineaments of Christ are manifestly 
seen, 

This is the theory, as logical, indeed, and complete, 
and fascinating, as it is scriptural and true. But what 
relation has this to experience? What is the likeness 
between the ideal picture, and that which we know that 
we are? Whether we look to the general average of 
the so-called Christian life, which does not so much as 
attempt to enter at all upon the communicant obedience 
or the communicant consciousness: or whether we think 
of those who, communicants as they are in the outward 


Sacrament of the sacrifice of Christ, with fervour indeed 
287 


288 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHar. 


and regularity but with very halting effort, and unsaintly 
consciousness, and utterly unperfected discipline, seem 
at first sight only to succeed in misrepresenting that glory 
towards which they intend to aspire, but which does not 
shine with any visible light in their daily actions or their 
daily smiles: we seem at first sight to be looking at an 
experience with which our doctrine has no relation at 
all. And we ask ourselves perhaps in sadness, or others 
insist on challenging us by asking, whether in fact we 
have ever seen any one at all,—whether we really believe 
in the possibility of seeing any one at all——who has really 
got beyond this most imperfect condition of claiming, 
perhaps, and clinging on to, yet not really reflecting or 
illuminating, that idea which we say is the meaning of the 
cardinal doctrine of the Christian creed. Or if, among a 
thousand thousand, there are one or two or three, in whom 
it would be generally allowed that there is a light visibly 
shining, which, though not of themselves, is yet at once 
the very thing which they are, and is a true gleam, in 
them, of the light of Christ: what are they, in their 
almost imperceptible rarity, to fortify a conception of 
human redemption which still has no reality of relation 
whatever to far, far, more than ninety-nine out of every 
hundred human beings ? 

This then is the difficulty. The discrepancy seems to 
us to be too great between the Christian theory and the 
actual life. Or at the very best it seems to fail by 
omitting the vast majority of mankind, even if here or 
there it may prove magnificently true. If only, we are 
inclined to say, we were all like St Paul or St John, 
things might possibly pass into realities of experience, 
which are only visionary now! But as it is, the necessity 
of conforming to experience has taught us to re-shape 
our conception of Christianity, and of the relation of 
Christianity to actual life. The Christianity of experience 


xII.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 289 


is a thing of soberer, and more commonplace, and more 
universal character than this. 

It may be worth while to take note of the consciousness 
which is implied in such a thought, that the more common- 
place standard of popular religion is a standard different 
in kind from that of St Paul or St John. It is well to 
be clear about this. For good or for evil, whether through 
failure in faith, or through growth in practical wisdom, the 
Christian standard which is less than Christ, is a standard 
which plainly differs from that of the Apostles in the 
New Testament. But it is not to such authority that we 
desire at this moment to appeal. It is the object of the 
present chapter to try and deal somewhat more fully with 
the temper of thought, whether expressly articulate or no, 
which feels a genuine hesitation, on the practical side, 
by reason of the transcendent greatness of the Christian 
ideal ; and to show, if possible, that all such temper is in 
real truth as misleading as it is widely prevalent and 
instinctively natural. 

The first, and the directest, answer to the objection, con- 
sists in challenging the truth of the facts on which it is 
based. We have in fact, in order to state it effectively, 
been obliged to borrow the spectacles, as it were, of the 
ordinary world: and the spectacles of the ordinary world 
are exactly those through which spiritual realities are not 
discerned. There are all degrees of insight ; and the full 
insight into spiritual truth is indeed rarer than rare. Even 
any near approach towards it is exceptional, and is certainly 
reached by far other than the world’s ordinary standard of 
common sense. Elisha’s servant was not wanting in any 
ordinary sanity when he failed to see any glimpse of the 
horses and chariots of fire with which, in fact, the mountain 
was full round about Elisha Elijah himself judged, no 
doubt, upon visible data quite rationally, when he felt himself 


1 2 Kings vi. 17. 
T 


290 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


alone, among all Israel, in allegiance to Israel’s God It 
was not greater worldly wisdom, it was insight of another 
order, the transfigured insight of a spirit made one with the 
Spirit of God, which was needed to see common things as 
the truth of God saw them. The difference was a moral 
and spiritual difference between the many who saw in 
Jesus crucified, a detected and defeated impostor, 
and the one who there bowed his soul in homage, 
and in prayer, to the Lord and King? of the Life 
which is beyond death. And this is a principle of the 
Church of Christ. “Blessed are the pure in heart; for 
they shall see God.” “Yet a little while and the world be- 
holdeth Me no more; but ye behold Me: because I live, ye 
shall live also.” ¢ 

It is not true that the leaven of the Kingdom, 
the working of the Spirit of the Christ, is a rare or a 
feeble thing, as in our more cynical moments we may be. 
tempted to say. It is in no idle optimism, nor any blind- 
ness to the evil which still plays so large a part, even 
amongst those in whom the Christian Spirit is working in 
deed and in truth, that we denounce, as simple blindness 
to truth, that temper of either triumphant or despondent 
scepticism, to which the ideal faith of the Church of Christ 
seems manifestly to have failed. If the Spirit of Christ is 
working with power, as He manifestly is to those who have 
eyes to see, in many a ministerial and ecclesiastical circle, 
amongst religious houses, and pastoral helpers of very 
various kinds: His presence is certainly not less manifest 
in many a form of life which may hardly seem, at first 
sight, to be within the immediate circle of His altar. There 
are no doubt conspicuous—we should call them excep- 
tional—instances, which the very world can see. Almost 
any one could quote an example, here or there, of the 


1 x Kings xix. 14. 2 Luke xxiii. 42. 
> Matt. v. 3. $ John xiv. 19. 





xI1,] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 291 


soldier who, unsurpassed in bravery, in enterprise, nay 
even, in certain contexts, in unbending and _ relentless 
severity, yet lived, quite obviously, his whole reality of 
inner life, in conscious communion with God, and in the 
spirit of the tenderest sympathy and service; or of the 
lawyer, whose professional eminence was none the less con- 
spicuous, because his whole bearing, his very eye and tone, 
bespoke one who was conscious at every moment of being 
the absolute servant and minister of the God whose Spirit 
was his life; or of the statesman, who was never quite so 
much a statesman, as a Christian, believing in, living upon, 
God, and His Christ,—through the Spirit of God, become 
(in a real sense) the very animating spirit of himself. 

But whilst there are examples more or less conspicuous 
which will come into our thoughts on every side,—upon the 
farm, in the village shop, in the busy city, in the counting- 
house, in the exchange, in the great place of business, among 
leaders of society, among organizers of workmen, in the 
court, in the castle, in the ball-room, in the barracks, on the 
battlefield, in the cabin, on the forecastle, in the seaport 
lodgings, in the workhouse, in the cottages of the very 
poorest, the village hovel or the garret of the city court: it 
is not only these, (though there are these, and many more 
such as these, whom some eye at least manifestly 
recognizes, and to God’s presence in whom some heart 
does homage,) of whom it concerns us to think. For there 
are countless more besides these, of whom these, just 
because they are comparatively conspicuous, are but partly 
representative ; in whom the working of the Spirit is still 
more inchoate, and impenetrable to any insight that is less 
than Divine. Amongst the coarse, the ignorant, and the 
degraded, “the publicans and the harlots,” the thieves and 
the murderers, there may be much more than meets the 
eye of any save the rarest and the most Christlike; dumb 
efforts after what is good; unrealized movements and 


292 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


actions of pure kindness; genuine possibilities, whose real 
character and value nothing short of the omniscience of 
Divine love can appraise. 

And altogether outside the range of such dim suggestions 
of Christlike possibility as these, are there not other possi- 
bilities, more remote, pathetic, and inscrutable still ?— 
possibilities overlaid, yet asserting themselves sometimes, 
even beneath the horror of the drunken carouse, in the 
police cell, in the dock, or on the scaffold ; nay, even on 
the very threshold,—or across the threshold,—of the house 
of wilful shame and sin? And if even these are not under 
all circumstances necessarily excluded from the possibility 
of Christ ; what shall we say of the whole vast region that 
lies between? The struggles, the failures, the successes, of 
the young; the obstinacy, the breaking down, the repent- 
ance, and the confessions, of the middle-aged—in every rank 
of life, in every conceivable surrounding of temptation and 
difficulty: these things do not fill our newspapers, nor the 
pages of our volumes of history: but the record of these is 
the true record of the world. One experience of the real 
inner effort, the struggling, earnest, often disappointed yet 
chastened aspiration, of the lady in the intricacies of fashion- 
able society: of the business man, of whatever kind, amidst 
the complications of false ideals of a commercial world, 
which if it is in a sense both commercial and Christian, is still 
far from being Christianly commercial ; of the officer, civil 
or military, the lawyer, the doctor, who has striven, and 
striven in vain, to find the fulness, which his spirit always 
had needed, in the busy round of his own merely pro- 
fessional or social life: of the young man, or young woman, 
in service, or in the workshop, subjected to a regime in 
which the Christian Spirit found no place, and liable to all 
the perils and risks of actual poverty: one experience of 
personal insight into, and thorough personal sympathy with, 
any one of these, would do much to open our eyes to the 


x11] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 293 


reality of the true drama of life, which is the working of 
the leaven of the Spirit of the Christ. 

What is going on throughout the life, under normal 
conditions of health and work, is not unfrequently more 
conspicuous still, under what we call the abnormal con- 
ditions of sickness, and decay, and death. It is not 
generally characteristic of the consciousness of grave 
illness to be garrulous. He who feels in himself that 
his bodily powers are drawing towards their close is 
more often self-contained and silent. There are long 
silences, the silences often of enforced reflection, in the 
gathering either of age, or of such weakness as carries 
tacitly within it the sentence of death. They are silences 
which we, who stand by, feel to be characteristic. Often, 
for us, they go with the softer tone and the gentler eye 
and the more chastened endurance, and the more child- 
like simplicity of temper. And we, as we stand by, take 
comparatively little notice of all these things, for it seems 
to us only natural that they should be so. The truth 
is that we have not measured, neither is there any man 
living who is capable of measuring, what those silent 
moments of pain, and growing weakness, and conscious 
ebbing away and dying, are capable of being,—even in 
those who have had infinitely little of explicitly religious 
knowledge, or sacramental privilege in the Church, 
where the spirit is kindly, the acceptance of discipline 
genuine, and the aspiration towards goodness and God 
sincere. Such moments may seem to us long protracted, 
or they may seem to us very brief, as for instance in a fatal 
accident, or on the battlefield. It would be indeed the 
idlest self-flattery for any one to dare to imagine before- 
hand that he could become, in them, essentially other 
than he was before; the self, in them, is developed, not 
revolutionized ; and yet, what their possibilities of develop- 
ing discipline may be, we have no power of measuring, 


294 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


or even of conceiving. May the blessing of God Himself, 
their Saviour, be with all those—whose lives He had 
fashioned for Himself, whom He had watched and yearned 
after through all their wanderings, and whom His grace 
can even now enthral and possess,—in those moments 
in which they are drawing very near to the immediate 
threshold of His Presence! 

To say things like these, while it is absolutely necessary 
for anything like the real proportion of truth, is certainly 
neither to forget, nor to undervalue, the presence and 
power of evil in the world. After all, we have been 
speaking not of those who are content to accept the evil, 
and embrace it as their good; but of those who, with 
whatever imperfection or discouragement, in the midst 
of whatever disability, or ignorance, are struggling, in 
their way, because the germ of the movement of the 
Spirit is in them, with an effort and a yearning of desire, 
such as the eye of omniscience, who is also Love, can see 
to be in its true nature upward and Godward. 

But if we begin by simply denying the truth of the 
facts assumed by the despondent or the cynical, we would 
go on to insist, in the next instance, upon the place which 
properly belongs, in the work of the Spirit of the Christ 
among men, to a conscious and strenuous upholding of 
the true ideal, as the necessary ideal, and as the necessary 
truth, of the meaning and life of Christians. Something 
there is to be said, first as to the power which belongs 
to belief in the ideal; secondly as to the lack, and the 
wide acquiescence in the lack, of the ideal; and thirdly 
as to the positive necessity of a resolute allegiance to it. 

Few beliefs are more fundamentally untrue, than the 
belief often strangely prevalent, that an exalted ideal is 
an unpractical thing. It would be far nearer to the truth 
to say that there is nothing on earth which can compare, 
in practical effectiveness, with a great ideal genuinely 


x11.) OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 295 


held. People who make a sort of pride of being practical, 
and who therefore insist upon looking at life always from 
the external or practical point of view, have little con- 
ception to how vast an extent human life, their own 
included, is really dominated by imagination. It is not 
half so much the outward conditions and accidents in 
the midst of which a man’s life is lived ;—it is rather 
the great dominant assumptions and beliefs, the fixed 
convictions and principles, with which he meets and 
moulds accidental conditions ;—which really determine 
the character of his life. It is so with each individual: 
and it is so with the corporate life of societies and nations. 
One dominant idea, if it be dominant, will determine the 
whole current of national life. It will colour the whole 
administration of justice; it will determine the whole 
drift of discussion, of preaching, of politics; it will bring 
victorious armies back to peace, or drive whole peoples 
into war; with a sweep of current more pervading and 
more irresistible, than any material ambition or material 
wrongs. Material conditions indeed must be idealized, 
they must be fused and fired, must have something of 
the hidden glow of great imaginative ideas, before they 
will stir a people to practical sacrifice. But ideas, once 
held, are well-nigh omnipotent. There is no limit to 
the sacrifice, in active effort or in patient suffering, which 
they will at times impose. Exacting though they be, all 
exactions for their sake will be tranquilly, if not eagerly, 
endured. This is conspicuously a truth of fact, even when 
the ideas which have dominated popular imagination are 
themselves untrue, or even directly mischievous. In 
different spheres, economical, political, theological, such 
phrases or cries as the South Sea Bubble, or the railway 
madness, or “blasphemy” or “witchcraft” or “treason” 
or “no popery” or “death to the Jews” or “the honour 
of the army” are perpetual reminders with what irresistible 


296 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP, 


force ideas which are untrue, and in some cases even 
fatuous and wicked, can drive peoples madly onward, 
against every dictate of judgment, of interest, and of 
conscience, into the most disastrous practical results. 

Now this, which is true of ideal convictions which are 
false and mischievous, is @ fortiort more true of ideal 
convictions which are absolute truth. There may not 
be the same paradoxically glaring illustrations; there may 
be far less of disproportioned passion ; the tide may swing 
with more silent and tranquil volume: but it is even 
more overwhelming and inexhaustible. There has been 
no more irresistible volume of power in human history, 
than that profound conviction, basing itself upon conscious 
identity with truth, which, in the course of three centuries, 
by the might of silent endurance under extreme and 
reiterated persecution, broke the obstinacy of imperial 
Rome, and compelled her to bow, in outward homage at 
least, to the faith of the Crucified Christ. In this particular 
instance the broad and corporate truth is, in the most 
direct and obvious sense, only shown to be true, because 
its truth was illustrated in a great number and variety 
of individual cases, taken actually apart, one by one. It 
demonstrates, if demonstration were needed, that the 
principle is as true of the several as of the corporate 
life; seeing that it could not be true, in fact, of the 
corporate, if it were not effective in the several. 

Now the ideal of which we are thinking at this moment, 
is that which we reached as the meaning of the doctrine 
of atonement. It is the real recovery, to a real con- 
summation of righteousness, of the Church, which is the 
Body, of Christ: and of every individual Christian, as a 
member of the Church, which is Christ. It is the actual, 
living, hope and belief, in each several Christian soul,— 
not so much of a “pardon” (whatever that would mean) 
while we remain on our level of helplessness and sin: 


eee ee 


xu] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 297 


not of a fictitious righteousness, a sort of imperfectly 
relevant make-believe, in consequence of a transaction, 
outside ourselves, which, so far as we try to understand 
it, only morally confounds us; not even of a far away 
gift of righteousness, a mere dream of the future, having 
no direct reference or relevance to any present efforts, 
or capacities, or experience: but an actual living hope, and 
sure conviction, informing and controlling every present 
effort, determining and interpreting every present 
experience, It is hope, it is certain knowledge, of a 
power, by the grace of Christ, now at work within us, 
and within our power to approach and receive more and 
more, and to nurse and train and strengthen, and to live 
on and by; the power of the actual presence of the living 
Christ, given to us and renewed in us through His Church ; 
whose culmination cannot but be our consummated one- 
ness of Spirit with Christ, who is the very righteousness 
of the Eternal God. 

Do we in fact, in our every-day experience, believe 
in this for ourselves? and is our every-day experience 
itself shaped and characterized by this belief?. The 
question is asked at this moment, not so much with 
any homiletic purpose, to produce self-conviction, as 
with a view to suggest the further thought, what 
would every-day experience be like in fact, if it were 
in fact dominated by this belief? Our thought at this 
moment is the power which properly belongs to the 
mere fact of belief in the ideal, as such. There are 
tens and hundreds of thousands, to whom the simple 
reality of this belief, if they were able to receive it simply 
and truly, would absolutely revolutionize present 
experience. It would alter their interpretation of life; 
it would wholly colour the spirit with which they 
approached, to grapple with, the troubles and disabilities 
of life; it would give them courage where they were 


298 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


faint-hearted, and effective strength where their purpose 
had been weak as water: and, through transforming them, 
in their use of the conditions, it would by degrees trans- 
form also the very character of the conditions themselves, 
through which their life was lived. 

If our thought should go back for a moment over the 
immense variety of anxieties and struggles, in different 
circumstances of life, which were hinted at a few pages 
back, it could hardly fail to recognize, as it looked from 
one to another in their several detail, what an incalculable 
force would be possessed, and was intended to be pos- 
sessed and wielded, by the ringing clearness of conviction 
and faith in such an ideal of Divine truth as this, What 
bracing to moral purpose, what capacity and depth of 
repentance in respect of actual sin, what power for 
dutiful ordering of Christian life as Christian, what 
strength to do and to endure, would be found in the 
mere conviction, if only the conviction were unhesitating 
and effectual, that this is, in truth, the very central core 
of the meaning and reality of our life! The truth is given 
to us that we may believe it: and our belief in it is 
meant to be a spring in us, for all practical purposes, 
of irresistible power. It is impossible to estimate too 
highly either the practical force of such a belief, or the 
practical loss which must inevitably follow, when lives 
which were meant to be animated by such a belief, are 
lived as it were in the cold and the dark without it. 
It is idle to depreciate the belief, as though it were only 
a decorative but unpractical ideal, with or without which 
the actual experience of life would necessarily remain 
itself one and the same. It is this which would charac- 
terize the experience of life: and it is part of the real 
Christian faith that the life should be characterized thus. 
We cannot dispense with that which is so essential to 
all our proper consciousness of power. The work of 








a rene yea es eS ee ee eT 


er 


XI1.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 299 


the Spirit of Christ is indeed going on very wonderfully 
in the midst of us—more than any eye, save the eye of 
God, can discern. But can any one doubt that that work 
would be very wonderfully quickened and furthered, that 
the Kingdom of God would be at once widened in range 
and brought wonderfully nearer to its consummation, by 
whatever could make this magnificent conviction, which 
is also the simple truth of the Kingdom of God, and 
the very meaning of the Christian doctrine of atonement, 
to be (as it assuredly ought to be,) the familiar property, 
and characteristic, and informing and overruling experi- 
ence, of every single Christian consciousness ? 

It is here that we come most immediately face to face 
with the characteristic failure of a Christianity that is 
content to be conventional. If under every variety of 
modern experience there are some in whom real life and 
struggle is going on; it is also true that under every 
variety of modern religionism that spirit of indiffer- 
ence can clothe (or conceal) itself, which is the paralysis 
of true religion. There is a great flood of civilized life, 
more or less comfortable, more or less respectable, which 
in its own eyes is religiously adequate, but which is, or at 
least is capable of becoming, more antithetical to the true 
life of the Spirit, than much of the coarser wilfulness and 
ignorance of those who at least have not taught themselves 
to explain away a call and a challenge they have never 
really understood. There are moments at least, from time 
to time, in which certain ringing phrases of the New 
Testament seem to us to direct the sternest sentence of 
the displeasure of Christ—not against those who are out- 
casts in the eyes of the world, but against those whose 
comfortable acquiescence in a false standard of religion, 
has made the ideals and enthusiasms, the capacities and 
the joys, of the life that is truly Christian, unintelligible 
to the world, 


300 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


It is a terrible thing when those who might have had 
full access to the reality of Christian experience, do by 
their own choice so secularize all its meanings and ideals, 
as to make the nominal Christianity of society bear 
witness against the truth of the Christian creed. The 
widely prevalent form of life which calls itself Christian, 
yet goes rarely to Church, and makes no attempt at all 
to realize the power of communicant experience; which 
has its intellectual hesitations about prayer, and has never 
seriously tried to meditate; which has no room in its 
conception of practical life for the reality of the unseen 
or the supernatural; which deprecates evangelistic zeal 
and is pained at all symptoms of a claim on the part of 
the Christian faith to any essential superiority over others, 
—much more if it should presume to think itself unique, 
the one true life and necessity for all mankind: this is 
the sort of creedless creed, the idle phantom or ghost of 
religious theory, through whose thick wreaths of fog and 
chill it becomes impossible for those of little learning and 
little opportunity to discern any lineaments of the Christ 
at all. It is a terrible responsibility,—the responsibility 
for debasing the Christian ideals, and making the Christian 
life, as practically preached to the world, a thing devoid of 
every trace of its characteristic significance and power. If 
I, the educated and instructed Churchman, exhibit to those 
whose direct advantages are far less than mine, a concep- 
tion of Christianity in which there is no supernatural rela- 
tion, no personal dependence and communion with Christ, 
I am doing what in me lies to make their true understanding 
of Christ impossible. I am testifying to the secularity of 
the spiritual, and the falsehood of the Church’s creed. And 
in all this there is a guilt which comes dangerously near 
to the guilt of “ poisoning” the very “springs” of the foun- 
tain of life. 

Non-communicant Churchmanship itself involves a con- 


oye 
Pa 


XII.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 301 


tradiction in terms, and is a perpetual witness against 
Christ. The extraordinary prevalence of a life without 
communion—not on the part of those who are either, on 
the one hand, openly anti-Christian, or, on the other, bowed 
down with self-accusing penitence, but on the part of men 
who think themselves Christians, and deliberately prefer, 
as more practical and free from mysticism, a travesty 
of New Testament Christianity, is a terrible sign of the 
blindness from within which has come upon the eyes of 
a large part of what should be the living Church of Christ. 
This at least is a test fact of an overt kind. Whatever 
perplexity there may be about this or that individual, 
the broad significance of this fact can hardly be obscure. 
Churchmanship which so little seeks for Christ, and so 
little either believes or obeys His words, as to live, and 


acquiesce in living, in permanent remoteness from His 


communion, stands openly self-condemned. It is con- 
demned, not so much for having failed to overcome the 
fierce impulses of passionate temptation, but for having 
refused, through indifference, to try. It is condemned— 
not for not having attained an ideal which nevertheless, 
in its own rough way, it loved; but for refusing to care 
to have, or to love, any real ideal at all. It has not only 
fallen short of, it has turned by deliberate preference aside 
from, so much as it clearly saw of the way of the Spirit 
of Christ. | 

It is necessary to say these things broadly, because they 
are, beyond question, broadly true. Yet even in saying 
them broadly, we disclaim, as of course, the judgment of 
any individual. A man may be living a life whose tenor 
is, in fact, a witness against the faith of Jesus Christ. We 
are right, not wrong, to recognize that the fact isso. Yet 
no human insight can measure how far this is, in him, a 
rebellion against light. Too often alas! the most inveterate 
and damaging prejudice against the orderliness of Church 


302 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


life is itself an honest prejudice, the revolt of a genuine, 
and not ignoble, though an ill-considered, revolt against the 
glaring moral and spiritual unrealities of those who had 
stopped at the husk and missed the kernel, or (in other 
words) who both preached and practised the outwardness of 
Christian habit, without any real refiection of the Christian 
spirit in their personal character and life, It is impossible 
to pursue this thought in the present context, or do any 
justice to the extent to which the worldliness, or hypocrisy, 
of Churchmen is the real cause of the revolt of many a 
noble nature from Churchmanship. But it was necessary 
to say that this thought, however little it can be enlarged 
upon, is most certainly not overlooked,—in order that we 
may insist also, without being misunderstood, on the prin- 
ciple which remains after all none the less true in itself, 
that revolt from, or indifference to, the communion of the 
Church—whatever may be its excuse in the individual—is 
in its proper nature, revolt from, and indifference to, the 
Incarnation and Atonement of Christ. 

In the same way, and with the same sort of guarding 
explanations, we must utterly demur to certain other 
symptoms, too familiar in conventional Christian life, as 
wholly antithetical to the Spirit of Christ. Thus under 
_ whatever provocation,—and the provocation often is great,— 
all consistent cynicism as to the real presence and working 
of goodness in the world, is, in fact, flat refusal of belief in 
Christ. Those who live in the midst of what is called 
“the world”; and who take, as their data, only the things 
which familiarly meet their eyes; are likely enough to be 
cynical. But had their data included their own sincere 
experiences of prayer and communion, and their sustained 
effort to serve, in the ways that were open to them, such 
as needed their service; the evidence before them would 
have been full of new facts which are not to them in evi- 
dence now ; and it would have been moreover a quickened 


x11. J OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 303 


power of discernment with which they would have 
viewed and judged the evidence: so that, in both ways, 
theirs would have been an insight into the very true 
proportion of things, at once more penetrating and more 
reverent than it is; and on these terms cynicism would not 
even have been felt as a temptation. The sense indeed of 
wrong in the world, and of the power of wrong, would 
have been not less but greater. And yet, more impres- 
sive even than the wrong, would have been the profound 
realization also of the hidden working of the Spirit 
which can never tolerate or make compromise with wrong. 

This phrase strikes a further note. For another 
symptom of secularized religion, is its over-complacent 
toleration of wrong. There is indeed a large-heartedness 
which is wholly Christian: and it is easy to slip, imper- 
ceptibly, from the one to the other. Largeness of heart 
towards evil-doers is a Christlike sign. But such largeness 
of heart is in fact a working of love, which yearns over 
them, even in their evil, because it yearns to separate them 
from their evil, It will do all that love can do to deliver 
them, and in their dimmest approaches towards contrition 
it is near at once to succour and strengthen them, But 
this is a difficult goodness: and the world has an easier 
substitute for this. The world’s substitute simply is,—to 
ignore or condone the evil: to treat the evil, with a large 
indifference, as if it were not evil but good, It is one thing 
to yearn towards the persons who have fallen into evil, and 
to be willing to do and bear for them, It is quite another 
thing to make light of the evil : or embrace, without a differ- 
ence, those who, having identified themselves with evil, have 
hardened their foreheads without shadow of relenting. 
“To abhor the evil” is as necessary a sign of the spirit of 
holiness as is to love the good. “Neither doth he abhor 
anything that is evil” * is a sentence of condemnation which 


1 Psalm xxxvi. 4. 


304 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY (CHAP. 


shows essential incapacity of any true enthusiasm for what 
is good. In those who cannot be stung into horror and 
hatred of evil the absolute antithesis between evil and 
good has been only too effectually melted away. They 
are all“more or less” this or that. Enthusiasm is dead. 
The whole ultimate drift is indifference. There is nothing 
at all like this in the new Testament. The publicans and 
the harlots who were drawn towards Christ were received 
with the gravest tenderness. But what of those who were 
not drawn at all? Or what of those—not harlots and 
publicans only but scribes and Pharisees,—to whom He 
and His searching tenderness, and His awful claims, were 
only an “offence.” The wrath of Jesus of Nazareth was 
—and is—uncompromising and very terrible. “Every one 
that falleth on that stone shall be broken to pieces; but on 
whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust.” ? 
Another form of the tolerance which belies religion is 
the total lack of enthusiasm for the mission of the Gospel of 
Christ. Zeal for evangelistic work throughout the world 
is a necessary note of belief and love towards Christ. 
Indifference to mission work, scepticism as to its possible 


value and duty, though it is painfully common in the world, 


and both accepted in fact, and maintained in principle, by 
many who think and mean themselves to be Christians, is, 
in simple truth, a fatal disloyalty. Of course this or that 
particular mission or missionary may fail, more or less 
glaringly, in his own ideal purpose and significance. To 
see, with whatever scathing clearness of view, the in- 
adequacy of individual persons or efforts, is no disloyalty ; 
it is rather a direct and certain result of true enthusiasm. 
But to disbelieve in the cause, to hesitate about the duty, 
to class Christianity as merely one type, amongst many 
more or less perfect or imperfect types of religion, to doubt 
its sovereign relation to all mankind, to accept imperfect 


1 Luke xx. 18. 


a 
> 


SAS Ee 
Ly 


xil.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 305 


success as an excuse for desisting from enthusiasm ; is 
utterly incompatible with any real understanding of what 
the Christian faith is. Such cold detachment is the 
opposite of zeal for the Lord. It is not the same religion 
at all as that of St John! It cannot, when cross-examined, 
escape conviction as an essential lack of the knowledge, 
the belief, and the love, which are characteristic and 
indispensable notes of the Spirit of Christ. 

These things, and others like these, are illustrations— 
not indeed of the defiant wickedness of the world, not 
even of the vices, the failures, the inconsistencies, known 
and recognized as such, which make a painful dualism in 
professedly Christian lives; but of that loss and lack of 
the true Christian faith and hope, which goes so far, in 
the midst of our modern world, to change and degrade 
the very significance of the Christian name. It is not 
vice as vice, nor failure as failure; it is the perversion of 
the Christian conception, the worldly slackening and loss 
of the ideal, the letting-slip, through indolence and dis- 
taste, of what is most vitally distinctive in Christian hope, 
and experience, and power, which has been the subject of 
the last few pages. It is this which is so fatally remote 
from Christ. It is acquiescent and comfortable. There 
is no struggle about it, and no aspiration. The life in it 
is smothered, and near to death. 

In saying this we are very far from denouncing the 
conditions of common life in the world as such. There may 
be much of Christward aspiration and anxiety in the Court 
pageant, and the ball-room, and the banquet ; as there may, 
on the other hand, amongst lives that are sordid and noisy 
in crowded city courts. The surroundings and temptations 
of luxury on the one hand, and the atmosphere on the 
other of fighting and pushing, of crowding and suffering, 
do not exclude,—on the contrary they may, in some 

1 x Jobni. 3, 4. 
Uv 


306 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHap. 


cases, even stimulate it. In either direction there is 
room as well for the wistful and aspiring, as for the law- 
less and the grovelling, life. But what is not compatible 
with the living movement of the Spirit of Christ, is 
acceptance, by preference, of ideals that have all been 
tuned down to the pitch of worldly comfortableness. 

This explaining away of hope and slackening of ideals, 
and determined acquiescence in the standard of the 
world as good, when the higher aim was, or might 
perfectly well have been, familiar, is far nearer to the 
direct antithesis of the Spirit, than is much wild fury of 
passion in those who have had but little knowledge of 
good. Such life is a wilful scepticism—or a flat refusal— 
of the light and truth of life. To acquiesce in it is not 
to be an image of Christ upon earth, a personal reflection 
of the Person of the Crucified, living upon His Humanity 
as spiritual food, growing into ever perfecter consummation 
of oneness with Him, and recognizing, in perfect oneness 
with Him, the one effective atonement, the one true 
significance and goal, of the whole life of man. But in 
the midst of all the pitiful unrealities of Christianity, can 
any one doubt what a noise and a shaking and a coming 
together would inevitably follow from anything which 
(even without touching any other condition) should but 
reawake once more, throughout men’s consciences, the 
true inward ideal and conviction of the meaning of the 
doctrine of the Atonement of Christ? 

After what has been said about the power, on the one 
hand, which belongs to the ideal, and, on the other, the 
great extent, and the disastrous meaning, of its defect in 
conventional Christianity, it may seem almost superfluous 
to add anything further to intensify the conviction of its 
necessity. Yet the pressure of that necessity is illustrated 
so strikingly in one or two directions, that it really seems 
desirable to insist on it still, The fact is that the doctrine 


xu.) OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 307 


of atonement, as we have endeavoured to conceive it, is 
no superfluous mystery, which, however wonderful it may 
be when men come to understand it, is yet irrelevant to 
their ordinary consciousness, and could, without any 
practical disadvantage in every-day life, be dispensed 
with or ignored. On the contrary, it is what the practical 
every-day consciousness itself absolutely needs and de- 
mands. There is that in the very constitution of human 
consciousness with which it perfectly fits, and to which 
it is wholly indispensable. Human consciousness cannot 
even be properly itself apart from it. And the conse- 
quence is that, however much it may be ordinarily 
overlaid or befogged, human consciousness is, in one 
way or another, constantly bearing its own witness to 
the truth of it. Any real appeal, straight from the Christ 
and the Christ-standard, strikes right home to human con- 
sciousness. We all know, at the bottom of our hearts, 
that there is, in real truth, but one meaning, and one 
standard, of human life. This is the secret of the extra- 
ordinary power of any preacher, or of any book, which 
without the least deflection or compromise of principle, bids 
men fearlessly, at every point, correct the standard of the 
world by the standard of Christ, and walk always and only 
“in His steps.” For so far at least, and in respect of the 
central principle appealed to, there is no element of ex- 
aggeration in the appeal. The one legitimate aim and effort 
of every man, at every time, is to do exactly what is right. 
And to do exactly what is right, is to do exactly what Christ 
(so far as He can be conceived under similar conditions) 
would Himself have done. Between what is right to do, 
and what He would have done (so far as He could have 
been under similar conditions) there is no distinction at 
all. And at all times, in all ways, the scope and meaning 
of the life of a Christian, is to believe in doing, and to do, 
without diffidence or qualification, what is right. 


308 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


But it is well to lay some emphasis upon the proviso 


which we have just twice repeated in parenthesis. For 
in the first place there are a vast number of situations in 
life, which constitute the most perplexing of practical 
problems, in which it is not compatible with a reverent 
conception of His Person, to conceive of Him as placed. 
It was wholly incompatible with the nature of the work 
which He came on earth to do, that He should have been 
within the scope of matrimonial responsibilities or anxieties, 


ape ‘rs aliens ial 


ee at ee tee Lee ee ys 


or should have been closely identified with party politics, 


or should have initiated a great commercial enterprise, 
or should have been a successful general, or should have 
dominated the public press. All these things are good; 
and a score of others, of which these are but samples, are 
also good ; but it is levity of mind, not religious reverence, 
which will conceive of Him as directly conditioned by 
them. He is indeed a standard to all these; but the 
standard cannot be applied with any rough and ready 
directness of method. And in the second place, if we ask 
ourselves, more indirectly, not what He would have done, 
but rather to what end, in conditions so wholly dissimilar, 
the essential principles of His life would work out, or what 
His apostles and saints would have done, in conditions 
which are not so hopelessly incongruous to them ; (which 
is in fact the same thing as asking, in the only reverent 
form, what it would perfectly beseem the Christ-Spirit 
to do): we have still to beware of rough and ready 
answers. In complicated circumstances it is often really 
difficult to know exactly what is right. We are not helped, 
but hindered, in our search for what is right, by the crude 
attempt to imitate, across all gulfs of intervening difference, 
the precise things which He did. Across all the complica- 


tions of a duty that really is complicated, it is mere 


spiritual ignorance and the rashness of extreme presump- 


tion, that expects to find a short-cut by asking, and ex- i 





x11.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 309 


pecting off-hand to be able to answer the question, what 
would Christ have done? He would have done that 
which is the absolutely wisest and best. When we know 
what is absolutely wisest and best, we shall know what 
He would have done. But we are far more likely to find 
what He would have done, by learning dutifully what is 
wisest and best; than to discover, by a short-cut, what is 
wisest and best, through asking what He would have done, 
and presuming, in all the crudeness of spiritual indiscipline, 
to give off-hand, perhaps in biblical phraseology, a wholly 
unjust and superficial answer. 

No sober-minded Christian would really expect to cut the 
knot of all his own practical difficulties thus. It is far less 
consistent still with Christian sobriety to presume, by a 
short and crude prescription like this, to map out, for 
all other men or classes of men, their several paths of 
spiritual duty and truth. It would be easy to enlarge 
upon this thought, and to illustrate it from many sides. 
But at this moment, after all, our object is not so 
much to expose the rashness necessarily involved in 
any attempt to define in detail the method of following 
His steps; as to welcome and affirm the truth of the 
principle as principle. So unqualified is the truth of the 
principle, that the utmost extravagance in the exposition 
of it goes only, after all, a limited way towards destroying 
its inherent fascination and power. The doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit, (which is the extension of the Incarnation, 
the application of the Atonement,) is that which reveals 
the possibility at once, and the true and dutiful method, 
of learning to do this which absolutely ought to be done. 

There is also another direction in which the neglect of 
the doctrine and experience of the Holy Spirit, indis- 
pensable as it is to real Christianity, and therefore to the 
real constitution of human consciousness, avenges itself, 
too surely, upon those who are guilty of it. This 


310 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP. 


tendency, on the side of its baser development, will include 


all that we understand by the word Spiritualism. Its 
deeper and more aspiring aspect is Mysticism. As the 
self-styled spiritualism is the extreme imperfection (when 
it is not the gross caricature) of the Christian doctrine 
of the Holy Spirit: so the so-called mystical is too apt to 
become only a one-sided understanding of the essential 
mystery of Christian personality. 

Spiritualism is the nemesis of unspirituality. The 
spiritualist plays upon the inherent consciousness of 
spiritual reality in those whose experience has never 
learned the meaning and methods of the Presence of 
God’s Holy Spirit. He makes use of spiritual phrases, 
and spiritual instincts; knowing indeed that the spiritual 
is real, yet fancying that it is a specialized region apart, 
to be explored by special apparatus of quasi-scientific 
faculties. He does not know that the spiritual is as 
wide as life, that it includes the material, and is its 
ultimate goal and significance. He does not know that 
the spiritual is the crown of the moral, and can only be 
gauged or known, with any certainty or any fulness, in, and 
as, experience of moral righteousness. Instead of setting 
himself to apprehend the spiritual by the faculties and 
experiences—the bracing of character and the discipline of 
life—through which men can adore, and reflect, and there- 
fore know, their God ; he tries, by methods and powers to 
which the Holiness of God is irrelevant, to penetrate into 
his so-called spiritual, as into a new compartment of un- 
explored, and unhealthily fascinating, science. He is right 
in believing in, and demanding, the spiritual. But he is 
wholly, and for the most part even grotesquely, wrong, in 
the direction in which he looks for the spiritual, and his 
fundamental conception of what spiritual means. He 
thinks of it only as another, though more delicate and im- 
palpable, form of the physical, amenable ultimately (if we 


eee ere eS 


ys n = ve 
es tod 4 SSeS 





a ae 





aT 7: 


x1.) OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 311 


can but adjust them with sufficient subtlety) to the tests 
and methods of physical experience. He does not realize 
it as a mode of being of which our only direct knowledge 
is in that personal experience of self-communing with 
righteousness, to which all physical tests, methods, and 
conditions whatsoever, are felt to be merely transitory—and 
even, in the last resort, in a real sense, irrelevant—acci- 
dents. The spiritualist who does not, by his spiritualism, 
mean the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is God, 
made manifest in the manifest “fruits of the Spirit,” is try- 
ing an impossible short-cut to the region of spirit, and sub- 
stituting, for the highest imaginable reality, the most 
hungry counterfeit and caricature. 

It may have seemed, perhaps, little less than offensive 
to mention just now, in the same breath, the spiritualist 
and the mystic. In both cases, indeed, a word of the 
noblest meaning has been perverted to strange, if not 
ignoble, uses. But the difference is very great. The word 
spiritualism has come to mean little else than its own 
degradation. The word mysticism has a far nobler history. 
And yet it may be said, with some truth, that the. word 
mysticism, as a distinctive term, exists chiefly to express a 
disproportion. This is not said in anything like deprecia- 
tion of the mystical aspect of the Christian life. On the 
contrary, the spirit of mysticism is the true and essential 
Christianity. Renewal of the study of mysticism is wholly 
a matter for rejoicing. But it will be felt that in all 
writing about mysticism there is a difficulty in defining 
what is written about. In truth there is an inherent am- 
biguity in our definitions of mysticism. We do not settle 
exactly which it is that we wish to define. Is it mysticism 
as ideally it ought to be? the essential harmony of truth 
which the mystics were (often inharmoniously) aiming at? 
Or is it the actual meaning which mysticism has borne, 
historically, in the life and thought of the “ mystics”? To 


st2 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


frame a definition which shall include the different histori- 
cal varieties of mysticism is difficult: to frame a definition 
which, whilst including them, shall characterize them as 
distinctive, excluding a perfectly real but non-mystical 
Christian experience, is an impossibility. It is compara- 
tively easy to say what the real truth of Christian mysti- 
cism is. It is, in fact, the doctrine, or rather the experi- 
ence, of the Holy Ghost. It is the realization of human 
personality as characterized by, and consummated in, the 
indwelling reality of the Spirit of Christ, which is God. 

Mysticism as identical with true Christianity, mysticism 
as the realization of the Spirit of Holiness, the Spirit of the 
Creator of Heaven and Earth, in, and as, the climax of 
human personality, is intelligible enough. But if mysticism 
is to be distinguished from “simple” Christianity as a 
special experience apart, a distinctive compartment of ex- 
ceptional possibility, it encounters insuperable difficulties, 
On the one hand there will be rival conceptions, with 
more or less equal claim to be regarded as distinctive of 
mysticism. On the other hand, whatever definition is 
adopted as distinctive, will be zpso facto an exaggeration. 
It is only by virtue of what is exaggerated or dis- 
proportioned in it, that mysticism can be conceived as a 
separate department, other than the realization of 
Christianity itself. 

And in point of fact, not only have all forms of mys- 
-ticism had their characteristic liabilities to exaggeration, 
but it is by their exaggerations that they have loomed 
large in history, and are, in the main, distinguished and 
characterized. The doctrine of God the Holy Ghost is 
what Christian mysticism has properly aimed at and 
meant. But Christian mysticism has, for the most part, 
historically, framed for itself some narrower definition 
and aim, realizing a part of the inclusiveness of the Divine 
Spirit of human personality, at the expense of the whole, 


ee 


SRT hye ee: 


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wiget 


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xI1.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 313 


The ascetic mystic, while pursuing an ideal which is 
absolutely true, has really under-valued the dignity of 
the body, and the divine excellence of the harmony of 
bodily cleanliness and vigour and health. 

The mystic who tries to find God negatively through 
the intellect, by disallowing, in thought, all the attributes 
of God, is saved only by his moral earnestness, and a 
happy incapacity of being fully consistent, from what 
would have been at first an intellectual scepticism, and 
ultimately a moral chaos also. 

The contemplative mystic misconceives the true 
relation of thought to experience, and experience to 
thought: the part, therefore, which the life of service 
bears in the highest capacities of spiritual insight into 
truth. 

The mystic who would rise to God by despising nature 
fails to see the divineness of little things, the real ex- 
pression of God in what is outward or inanimate. 

The symbolic mystic, seeing God in things little or 
inanimate, very rarely understands aright the proportion 
between the wonderful revelation of God in nature, and 
that more wonderful and more capable reflection of God 
in man, which causes so many of the highest saints to 
seem absorbed in the life of practical service, and accounts 
for what would otherwise be wholly amazing,—the scriptural 
conception of love. Moreover he tries to find the com- 
pleteness of God revealed in inanimate nature just as it 
stands; forgetting the extent to which inanimate nature also 
“sroaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” and 
being subjected to the law of perfecting through sacrifice, 
has to reach its own ideal significance, not by simple 
development but rather through a process of transfiguring 
“deliverance ”—“ from the bondage of corruption into the 
liberty of the glory of the children of God.” 


1 Rom. viii, 21, 22. 


314 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


One and all, they tend by disproportionate emphasis 
upon their own aspect of truth to impair the perfect 
harmony of the truth of the Spirit—that very truth to 
which they only exist to bear witness ; and it is precisely 
upon their exaggerations that conceptions, and definitions, 
of mysticism are apt to be made to depend. One and all, 
the exaggerations find their full correction in the Person of 
the Incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ; for all the exaggera- 
tions are partial lights from the full splendour of the 
presence of His Spirit, which is the ideal meaning of 
Christian personality. 

It is Christ who is the true mystic; or if the mode of 
expression be preferred, it is He who alone has realized all 
that mysticism and mystics have aimed at—with more, or 
with less, whether of disproportion or of success. And in 
Him this perfect realization evidently means a harmony, a 
sanity, a fitly proportioned completeness. It is an inward 
_ light which makes itself manifest as character; a direct 
communion of love which is also, to the fullest extent, 
wholly rational at once and wholly practical ; it is as much 
knowledge as love, and love as knowledge; it is as truly 
contemplation as activity, and activity as contemplation. 
In being the ideal of mysticism, it is also the ideal of 
general, and of practical, and of a//, Christian experience. 
For the most practical type of Christian experience mis- 
conceives itself, until it conceives itself as an expression, 
in action, of a central truth,—that truth of transcendent 
fact, which practical Christians are too often content to 
call “mystical,” and, so calling it, to banish, or try to 
banish, from the region of practical life. 

We may shrink indeed from any mere disbelief in ex- 
periences in which we ourselves have no part. In trance, 
in exalted contemplation, in raptness of spirit, there may 
be greater possibilities than we ordinarily dream of. We 
may shrink from limiting the possibilities of insight into 


tar hs 


2S 


XII. ] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 315 


truth, in those who surrender themselves in childlike sim- 
plicity, body and soul, to the reception of truth. But we 
need not hesitate to say that no partial experience can be 
the more excellent for being partial. Active duty is not 
heightened by paralysis of contemplative power ; and con- 
versely, paralysis of the life of active duty and benevolence 
is a numbing, not a quickening, of spiritual faculty. True 
spiritual experience is not, as such, a remoteness from the 
livingness of life ; rather it is to be livingly animated, for all 
purposes of living, with the Spirit of the Incarnate, which 
is God. 

It is the width of this truth of the Christian creed which 
the mystic so often has missed. It is not that he has too 
high a doctrine of the Spirit. On the contrary, it is not 
high enough. Because he fails to apprehend the indwell- 
ing presence of the Spirit, which is God, as cardinal to 
the Christian creed and life, therefore he looks for the 
meaning of the doctrine of the Spirit, as something fenced 
apart, and exceptional in its conditions and results. Of 
mysticism as a distinctive aspiration, or abnormal possi- 
bility, or remote compartment of experience, nothing need 
have been heard in the history of Christendom, if only 
every Christian had been a mystic in the true sense, as 
assuredly every Christian ought to be; that is, had been 
so filled with the pervading Presence of the Spirit of the 
Incarnate (which is the Personal presence of the eternal 
God) that he himself, being constituted what he was by 
the character of the indwelling Spirit, “with unveiled face 
reflected as a mirror the glory of the Lord.”? In pro- 
portion as mysticism either claims to be, or is regarded 
by ordinary Christians as being, an abnormal by-way or 
by-region of special experience, rather than as the realiza- 
tion in special fulness of that which is the central inspira- 
tion and meaning of all Christian life, as well practical as 


1 2 Cor. iii. 18. 


316 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHAP. 


contemplative ; in that proportion does the mysticism 
itself become directly liable to various forms of exaggera- 
tion and unhealthiness, while the Christianity which is 
content to remain “non-mystical” is impoverished at the 
very centre of its being. All Christians profess belief in 
the Holy Ghost. Had only all Christians understood, 
and lived up to, their belief, they would all have been 
mystics: or, in other words, there would have been no 
“ mysticism,” 


Such, then, is our ideal. But once more who is 
there that realizes it? Something has been said about the 
many, in familiar life, who plainly fall short of it. What 
of the few, whom we might be inclined to call Saints? 
Or is the world simply divided into the many who 
fail, and the few who perfectly realize and reflect 
Christ? 

If we should have the opportunity of cross-questioning 
the inner consciousness of those who seem to be saintliest, 
it is probable that while on the one hand, they would bear 
emphatic testimony to the truth that this, and nothing 
less than this, is to them the real ideal and significance 
of Life in Christ, on the other hand, they would be no 
less emphatic in disclaiming anything at all like an actual 
attainment of it. The more they realize what their life 
means, the less do they seem to have accomplished its 
meaning: even while (paradoxically enough) the very 
sense of non-accomplishment is rather their hope and 
confidence than their despair. They know that Christian 
life means, and that it will be perfectly consummated in, 
Christ. They are confident of the meaning, and confident 
of the issue. They know it moreover not as a merely 
blind faith, but with what is, in fact, the knowledge of 
experience. Yet their experience is so inchoate, that it is 
experience rather of a faith than of an achievement, of a 


al eS 


sn.) OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 317 


living principle out of which results must issue rather than 
of results already possessed. 

As to the meaning of the ideal, or the certainty of the 
ideal, you will try in vain to shake the immovable 
confidence of their faith. For indeed it is more than 
what most of us mean by faith. It belongs to the 
highest form of all possible knowledge. It is part of the 
inherent consciousness of their own personality. Yet, 
immovable as is, on this side, their certainty, it still is a 
faith, and a faith believed rather than realized, on the side 
of its effects. These men are not conscious of an inherent 
righteousness. Rather, so exceptional is their insight into 
righteousness (and insight is affinity), that there is no 
class of men on the face of the earth who feel so keenly 
—and so truly—their own immeasurable failure of 
righteousness. They do not feel themselves animated by 
the Spirit of Christ,—living reflections of the glory of 
Christ. On the contrary, in proportion to their own in- 
sight into the vision of holiness, is their insight into, and 
their consciousness of, sin. They are the true self- 
accusers, They are the thorough penitents. Even this 
indeed is, in a certain way, a likeness with Christ, a school- 
ing in the discipline of the Cross, For Christ, in the 
conditions which He deliberately undertook,—though free, 
and because free, from personal sin,—was yet the sin-bearer, 
the perfect—the only perfectly possible—penitent. But 
our thought at this moment requires not so much the 
discernment of the Christlike lineaments in the penitent 
as penitent ; but rather, what is equally true, the discern- 
ment that the consciousness of the penitent, as penitent, 
is a consciousness rather of contrast than of affinity 
with Christ. What he feels is his unholiness, his in- 
capacity, his remoteness from God. And what he feels 
in itself is absolutely true. Even he, though, as penitent, 
he is nearer to the truth than other men, yet errs rather 


318 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHaP. 


in under than in over-estimating his own actual failure, 
and incapacity, of righteousness. Penitent as he now is, 
he will yet be still more emptied, still more humiliated, 
still more utterly penitent, as he draws nearer to the 
great consummation. But our thought just now is not 
on the iucompleteness so much as on the realty of his 
humiliation and emptiness. It is not incompatible—nay 
it intimately corresponds—with his own inherent certainty 
as to the meaning, and destiny, of his own personality. 
Yet as humiliation and emptiness it is quite unreservedly 
sincere and real. No one on earth is so absolutely un- 
affected in self-accusation and realization of sin, as the 
saint in whose spirit is the vision of God. He is, and he 
knows that he is, a sinner, without worth or dignity. He 
is, and he knows that he is, in himself by himself, guilty 
before His God without excuse, and impotent without 
hope. And therefore when he realizes also, as he does 
realize, in himself, the earnest of the presence, and the 
certainty of the destiny, of Christ ; he realizes something, 
which, though it has indeed a present reality, is yet so in 
contrast with the present, that it may after all be truly 
described not only as of faith rather than of sight, but 
perhaps even as of blind faith, of faith whose eyes are 
fixed wholly on the far future, of faith magnificent in its 
transcendence, or even defiance, of all conditions sensibly 
realized. 

After all, in respect of conditions sensibly realized, the 
difference between man and man on earth, the difference 
between the greatest sinner (whose eyes are yet turned 
feebly towards God), and the greatest saint (who could be 
no saint if he did not feel himself a sinner) is a difference 
only of degree: and it may be that this difference of 
degree may seem hereafter to be strangely, perhaps even 
infinitesimally, small, when compared with the difference 
between what the highest saint can now feel himself to 





XII] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 319 


be, and what he even now believes—nay knows—that he 
shall himself, in the Spirit of Christ, become. The faithful 
Christians who are saints in Christ, are not enjoying a 
present fruition of holiness. They are looking forward 
to it in a faith which, in respect of all sensible conditions, 
is fearless in over-riding present experience, even whilst, 
as faith, it is itself inwrought with experience. They 
are, after all, steadily looking forward, in the certainty 
of an immovable faith, to something which they believe— 
and know—to be the very inmost truth of themselves, 
even whilst it is, in the certainty of immediate experience, 
not only external to, but in actual, often in painful, contrast 
with themselves. | 

Such, then, is the outcome of our exposition of Atone- 
ment. We would ask people to believe in the work of 
Christ’s Passion as a real transformation of themselves, 
as finding its climax in the real climax of themselves. 
So far it may truly be said that we are demurring to a 
purely objective theory of atonement. Atonement cannot 
be described, or accounted for, simply as a transaction, 
external to the selves who are atoned for. In themselves 
is its ultimate significance. In themselves is its ultimate 
reality. Nor can they themselves be ultimately realized 
any otherwise save through it. 

Are we then pointing to conditions merely subjective, 
as a substitute, or at least a sort of imitation, or reflex 
result, of Calvary? Are we making the real atonement 
a personal achievement? are we finding its original signifi- 
cance either in personal feeling or personal character ? 
or are we trying to stimulate in ourselves a strong 
imagination of personal holiness? It is obvious that we 
are doing nothing of the sort. Any such imagination 
would be the most hollow, and the most pitiable, of make- 
believes. The sense of goodness in ourselves would prove 
only our incapacity of understanding goodness. Atone- 


320 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [cHaP, 


ment asa personal achievement would be impossible. Nor 
are we so far deceived as to the bitterness or the depths 
of sin by the grandeur of a transcendent (albeit a true) 
theory, as to look for the consummation of the meaning 
of Christian personality within the conditions, and dis- 
abilities, of present experience. Such consummation is no 
matter of present consciousness, or present fruition. To 
imagine so would be to degrade the augustness of the 
meaning of Christian personality. 

Nor is Christian personality attained, through effort, by 
those who, but for effort, had it not. There is indeed 
Christian effort. And there is imitation of Christ. But 
these are rather the necessary outcome, than the producing 
cause, of the Spirit of Christ. It is by His initiation rather 
than ours, and by the acts of His power rather than ours, 
that we were first brought into relation with Him, and 
that His Spirit is progressively imparted to us. He does 
ask of usa certain response of docility. He does ask us 
to be willing to receive, to be willing to correspond, to 


1 «¢T know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I 
know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a 
one caught up even to the third heaven. And I know such a man (whether in 
the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth), how that he 
was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not 
lawful for a man to utter. On behalf of such a one will I glory: but on mine 
own behalf I will not glory, save in my weaknesses. vtmép Tod Toovrov kavx7- 
coma vrép de guavrod ob Kavxjooua, ef wh év rats dcGevelas.” 2 Cor. xii. 2-5. 

Of whom is St Paul speaking? There is one before his thought, whom he 
sharply contrasts with himself,—imép 5é éuavrod ob. Who is it? Who is the 
‘6 self” of whom he will not glory? and who is the ‘‘ such a one” of whom he 
will? Are they not both—with whatever difference—himself? 

Even, then, the veteran apostle and martyr, who, in vision, by anticipation, 
had himself seen and tasted the truer reality of himself, yet means by ‘‘ himself,” 
in the present, the imperfect self, the self characterized by weaknesses within 
and distresses without, and sharply chastened by the “‘ thorn in the flesh,” the 
‘‘ messenger of Satan to buffet ” him. 

As the clear vision of his transfigured self does not prevent his self-identifica- 
tion meanwhile with the weakness and distress; so does not his true self- 
identification with the weakness and distress obscure the truth that the trans- 
figured being whom, having once felt, he cannot but contrast with himself, yet 
is, to say the least, something very far nearer than he is, to the true and 
ultimate reality of himself. 


ms hi 


x11.] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 321 


obey in order that we may receive, to rejoice in correspond- 
ing, to believe in what we have received, and shall become, 
to believe in ourselves and in Him. But it is always He 
who achieved, and who imparts. Essentially we are 
throughout receivers, not workers. The Pentecostal Spirit 
is bestowed in grace, bestowed on faith, bestowed through 
sacraments, anyway bestowed, not earned. Certainly we 
are not speaking of a subjective that can be detached 
even for a moment, even in imagination, from its own 
essentially objective original. 

We have, then, a magnificent faith—a faith, at once 
grounded in, yet transcending, experience; a faith in a 
magnificent future, which is at once incompatible with, 
and yet is the very truth and meaning, of the conscious- 
ness of the present. We do ask for belief, and indeed 
enthusiasm, for a certain conception (or consciousness) as 
to the relation between the achievement of Calvary and 
the inner meaning and possibilities of human personality. 
We do believe that the Spirit of Calvary is to animate our- 
selves; and that the animating of ourselves by the Spirit 
of Calvary is a reality wholly God’s and wholly ours; 
wholly objective at once and wholly subjective; and we 
do believe that the mere belief in such a reality is itself 
the first proper condition of its own consummation,—is 
itself a transforming and enabling power, received from 
without, and yet vitally within, the real being of the 
self. 

But precisely because this consummation is so much 
more future than present, so much more grasped by faith 
(though a faith which is experience) than realized in 
feeling or in sight, therefore after all, so far from parting 
company with those who in faith adore an atonement 
external to themselves, it is precisely with them that we 
shall seem, most and last, to take our stand. When we 
contemplate the Cross we do indeed recognize that we are 

x 


322 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY [CHAP. 


gazing on no remote transaction, no mere paying down 
(as it were) of purchase-money, but rather upon the 
meaning, the destiny, the true character, and revealed 
possibility, of ourselves. Yet even because its ultimate 
significance is to be within ourselves, we adore it as yet 
as external to ourselves. Except we first so believe, and 
adore, and love, we are trying to close up the very avenues 
through which the external fact should first begin to become 
the characteristic reality of ourselves. We study it indeed 
not as a transaction that is either properly, or ultimately, 
external. We see in it the revealed climax of human 
personality, and the one only possibility by which our 
imperfect personalities can hope to be consummated in 
that which alone can ever be their true meaning. We 
see ourselves really in it; and in it alone we discover 
the reality of ourselves. Yet after all, our present in- 
completeness is necessarily such that, here at least and 
now, the curtain falls, and must fall, upon us still in the 
attitude of rapt belief and imploring worship, towards what 
—though by faith we see our true selves nowhere save 
in it,—is still, to all sensible experience, quite outside— 
nay the contradiction—of ourselves. We are still in the 
ranks of those who live by fastening their eyes, in faith, as 
on the serpent of brass, set before their eyes to be an object 
of faith. 

In the failure of ourselves, which is an integral part of 
experience, that which helps us most is that which we feel 
to be without, and beyond, ourselves. It will not comfort 
us so much, in our moments of weakness or dying, to 
be adjured to remember the dignity of our being, as to 
be pointed to the scene enacted once for all upon the 
Cross. We believe that Calvary wonderfully includes and 
conditions ourselves. Yet it is to Calvary, not as ourselves 
but as Calvary, that, in the breaking up of ourselves, we 
most earnestly desire to hold fast. We are left, here at 


x11, ] OUR PRESENT IMPERFECTION 323 


least and now, still gazing as from afar, not in fruition 
but in faith, on that which we have moé realized in our- 
selves. We are still kneeling to worship, with arms 
outstretched from ourselves in a wonder of belief and 
loving adoration, that reality wholly unique and wholly 
comprehensive, the figure of Jesus crucified. 


SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER 
ON 


THE ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 


IT would be quite foreign to the present purpose to write a 
history of the doctrine of atonement. The historian of a 
doctrine must aim at completeness. He will do justice to 
every development or variation. He will overlook no 
eccentricity. And his finished work will often present 
more directly a curious picture of the working, perhaps 
of the failure, of the human mind, than a vivid or vivifying 
statement of the inner truth of the doctrine itself. 

Such a study is full, no doubt, of its own fascination. 
But for minds whose great interest is the reality of the 
doctrine, as practical, living, and true, such a study is by 
no means always edifying. So far from leading minds 
straight to the living heart of truth, it seems often to 
perplex and repel. A comparison between different 
teachers or schools is occupied more, in proportion, with 
their differences, and perhaps eccentricities, than with 
the central reality which they diversely present. To pass 
in thought from one disproportion to another; to study, 
and dissect, successive inadequacies, if not grotesquenesses: 
is, to a mind partly puzzled and wholly eager, a repugnant, 
and sometimes even a perilous, exercise. If a man doubts 
the truth of the atonement to himself, he is hardly likely 
to be reassured by a close historical study of the different, 
more or less unsatisfying, ways, in which a great variety of 
minds have struggled to express it. The variety itself is 


distracting ; and each several exposition, when tabulated in 
3% 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 325 


comparison and contrast with others, is put in its own least 
persuasive, because least living, form. The very weariness 
and entanglement of the history of a doctrine, as history, 
makes it harder to many minds to embrace with any 
vivid insight, or moral enthusiasm, the living truth itself as 
living and as true. 

But if a history, as history, is as much outside the 
purpose, as the power, of the present effort; that purpose © 
may nevertheless be served by some glimpses into history. 
The glimpses, such as they are, may seem to be miscel- 
laneous ; but they will have, of course, a connected purpose. 
That purpose is to show how real is the freedom of essential 
Christian thought, from those conceptions of atonement 
with which it has become gradually, and has been sup- 
posed to be inherently, identified: and thereby also to 
vindicate, from the point of view of theological history, 
the view which has been taken in the foregoing pages. It 
is, then, even more for a defensive than for a purely 
historical purpose; it is to justify the rest of the volume 
against some not unnatural distrust, that, in the main, 
this supplementary chapter is written. It may be felt that 
there is a suspicion of newness about the present exposi- 
tion: that it is more distinct, than is wise or right, from 
what look like the larger currents of traditional thought. 
To this I do not plead guilty. If there is anything in it 
which seems to our present assumptions to be novel, I 
should plead in reply not only that in much larger measure 
it is antique, conservative, orthodox, and scriptural; but 
that it is only the element of mistake in our present 
assumptions which causes even the appearance of novelty. 
The simplest way of justifying this plea is to try to exhibit, 
in their delicious largeness and simplicity, the mode in 
which the earliest generations of Christians felt and spoke 
about the cardinal fact of the atonement. I should like 
to be able to show that the essential position of the present 
volume would have sounded in no way either novel or bold 
to any Christian teachers or communities—though of course 
every teacher did not put everything in exactly the 
same way—until, at the least, the end of the Athanasian 
age. 

For this purpose I propose to dwell a little upon the 
earliest Christian utterances, and to pass from them to 
Athanasius. From Athanasius, in particular, I hope that 
it will conclusively appear, not only that his own mind was 
wholly without some modes of thought about the atone- 


326 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


ment which we are sometimes tempted to regard as in- 
separable from it; but also that he is altogether un- 
conscious of any such assumptions in the mind of the 
Church of his time. If there be anything narrow or 
artificial in the explanations of Ireneus or Origen, or 
any others, I hope that Athanasius will make it plain 
enough that any such elements of rigidity belonged to 
the private efforts of individual theologians to illustrate 
the central faith of the Church; they were no part either 
of the central faith, or even, as yet, of those popular 
Christian conceptions which gathered round the central 
faith. 

For the rest, there seem to be some special reasons for 
dwelling a little upon Anselm and Abzlard: and I have 
ventured to try and make my position the clearer by 
direct comment upon one or two of the treatises upon 
the atonement which seem to be most current and most 
practically influential amongst ourselves. 


To begin, then, with some references to the Apostolic 
Fathers. 

In the epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians 
there are two passages, each of which strikes a single note, 
and strikes it most impressively. In the first the blood of 
Christ is the real possibility of human penitence. Human 
penitence—not vicarious penitence only in man’s stead, 
but reality of penitence in man himself: this is its beauty, 
its joy, its preciousness, in the presence of God. It has 
“won for the whole world the grace of penitence.” 

Aw droXlrwpev Tas Kevas Kal paraias ppovridas, kat EAOwpev ext 
Tov evkieH Kal ceuvdy THS Tapaddcews Hpov Kavova, Kal USwpev Ti 
KaAddv kal Ti Teprvdv Kal ti mpordexTOV évirriov TOU ToLjoavToS 
npas. arevirwpev eis Td alua tov Xpiurrod kal yvapev ws ear Tipiov 
Tt) Oc@ r@ Ilarpi avrov, bri Sia THv yerepay owrnpiav éexyvbev 
TravtTt TO Kdopy petavolas xdpi emjveyKev, k.T.A.1 I. ad Cor. vii. 

In the other passage, the one thing that is absolutely 
clear is that the passion of Jesus Christ was all love, love 
beyond human conceiving, the love of God Himself. There 
is not a whisper here of anger, or vengeance. It is simply 
the unplumbed mystery of love. 


1 The text is that of Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn. Lightfoot reads t7- 
veyxev and upon it makes this note,—‘‘ brjveyxev ‘offered.’ So it is generally 
taken, but this sense is unsupported ; for Xen. Hell., iv. 7. 2, Soph. El., 834, 
are not parallel. Perhaps ‘won (rescued) for the whole world.’” éwiveyxer 
would seem to convey the same meaning still more directly. 


~~. o.oo re es 


SS ee 
a See 


al at 2 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 327 


“Whoso has love in Christ, let him do the command- 
ments of Christ. What the bond is of the love of God, 
who is there that can declare? The grandeur of its beauty 
who is sufficient to utter? The height to which love leads 
up is beyond telling. Love joins us unto God. Love 
covers overa multitude of sins. Love bears with all things. 
Love is all long-suffering. In love there is nothing mean, 
and nothing haughty. There is no schism in love, and no 
spirit of division. Love does all things in oneness of soul. 
In love the elect of God were all made perfect. Without 
love there can be nothing well pleasing to God. In love 
the Master took us unto Himself. For the love which 
He had toward us, Jesus Christ our Lord, in the will of 
God, gave His own blood for us, and His flesh for our 
flesh, and His life for our lives.” 

An act wholly proceeding out of, wholly characterized 
by and consisting of, love: an act whose priceless beauty 
lay in this—that it was, in possibility at least, the actual 
penitence of all mankind: this is the conception of the 
atonement which meets us at the outset of post-apostolic 
literature. It is a conception singularly free from the 
technicalities and perplexing constraints of a good deal 
of the logic of subsequent writers; and perhaps hardly 
less striking, in respect of this contrast, than it is in its 
own large and living suggestiveness. 

There is very little in the Ignatian letters which bears 
upon the rationale of the interpretation of Christ’s death 
on the Cross. The event itself indeed, in its historical 
reality, is most earnestly insisted on, as the very centre of 
the Christian gospel and life. It is astonishing into how 
many aspects of life it enters as not only a relevant, but 
the cardinal, thought. The following passages are collected 
by Bishop Lightfoot, when commenting upon the phrase, 
in the inscription of the epistle to the Ephesians, which 
speaks of the Church of Ephesus as “united and elected 
in the power of a real Passion through the will of the 
Father and of Christ.” “This [év rd@ec],” he says, “should 
probably be connected with both the preceding words. 
The ‘ passion’ is at once the bond of their union, and the 
sround of their election.” For the former idea compare 


igy dydary mwpocehdBero tuds 6 Seordrns* Sia rhv dydarnv hy boxev mods 
heads 7d aluu avrod tdwxev drép Hud "Inoods Xpiords 6 xdpros nuay, ev Oehjpyate 
Ged, kal Tiv cdpka brép Tis capkds Huey Kal Thy Puxhy brép ray Pryor judy, 
I. ad Cor. xlix. 

* See, ¢.g, Trall. 9, Smyrn. 1, 


328 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Philad, 3. & tus €v GdXotpig yvopn mepurarei, oftos TH TAB 
ov ovyxataridera; for the latter, Zral/. 11. év tO rdéda adtov 
mporkadeira. vas. This latter relation it has, because in 
foreordaining the Sacrifice of the Cross God foreordained 
the call of the faithful. Thus their election was involved 
in Christ’s passion. 

“This word has a special prominence in the Epistles of 
Ignatius. In Christ’s passion is involved the peace of one 
Church (Z7va//. inscr.) and the joy of another (PAz/ad. inscr.). 
Unto His passion the penitent sinner must return (Smyrn. 
5); from His passion the false heretic dissents (Phzlad. 3) ; 
into His passion all men must die (JZagu. 5); His passion 
the saint himself strives to imitate (Rom. 6); the blood of 
His passion purifies the water of baptism (Zphes. 18) ; the 
tree of the passion is the stock from which the Church has 
sprung (Smyrn. 1); the passion is a special feature which 
distinguishes the Gospel (Pzlad. 9, Smyrn. 7). In several 
passages indeed it is co-ordinated with the birth or the 
resurrection (Ephes. 20, Magn. 11, Smyrn. 12, etc.); but 
frequently, as here, it stands in isolated grandeur, as the 
one central doctrine of the faith.” 

Many of the passages here quoted go chiefly to show 
the dominant place of the passion in the theology of 
Ignatius; but there are perhaps two specific thoughts 
which may be emphasized as inherent in them. The first 
is that to possess Christ is to desire to suffer with Him, 
or (in other words), that a voluntary sharing in the passion 
of Christ is the life of Christ in us ;2 and the second, which 
is a corollary from the first, is that for us the effect of the 
passion is incomplete, until it finds a consummation within 
ourselves,—our penitence, our death, and therefore ovr life, 
and our resurrection through death.’ | 

It may be allowable to refer, further, to the phrases in 
which the Blood of Christ is said to de love. In one 
context “faith” is the “ flesh,” and the “blood” is love ; in 
another the “flesh” is the “bread of God,” the spiritual 
food of the soul, and the “ blood” is imperishable love. 


1 "Emirpéyaré por ppnrhy elvar tod wddous rod Geod mov. ef tis adrov év 
éaur@ exe, vonodrw 8 bédw, Kal cuprabelrw po, elids ra ouvéxovrd pe. 
Rom. vi. 

2 Ol 6é microl év dydary xapaxrijpa [@xovor] Oeod Ilarpds dia "Inood Xpirod, 
bv of dav wh atOapérws Exwmev 7d arobaveiv els rb abrod wdOos, Td Sv abrov 
ovk éorw év huiv. Magn. v. 

8 Compare the two passages just quoted with ’AAAd wndé yévorrd wo adbrav 
pynuovevew, péxpis 00 peravonowow els 7d rdOos, 8 ect hudy dvdoracis. 
Smyrn. v. 


a ee 


af 
o 


NP i a tea 


Sa ae 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 329 


’"Avaxticace Eavtods év miorer, 6 eoTw odp£ Tov Kupiov, Kai év 
dydary, 6 ert aiya "Inoot Xpwrrod.} 

Ody Sopa: tpopy POopas, ovde ySovais tod Biov rovrov. daprov 
Ocod GéArw, 6 ext odpE Inoot Xpurrot, rod éx orépparos Aafid, 
kal mopa Gédrw 7d aiva avrod, 6 éotiv aydrn &pOapros.? 

A passage is quoted from the epistle of Barnabas in 
which, (in contrast with the Israelites who were so in- 
capable of receiving the covenant, when given, that Moses 
broke the two tables in pieces before reaching the people) 
Christians are said to have been made capable of God’s 
covenant, “through the Lord Jesus, who was the heir of 
the covenant:”* and Christ is said to have come into the 
world for this, that* when we had recklessly thrown our 
hearts away to death, and were given over to the lawless- 
ness of sin, He might Himself redeem us out of the 
darkness,—according to the charge given Him of the 
Father, that He should make ready for Himself a holy 
people. 

Such a sentence does not carry us very far. But it may 
certainly be said, that, on the one hand, it is the “ Righteous- 
ness” of Christ, not anything like His “ punishment,” which 
is instinctively thought of as the redeeming power ; and, 
on the other hand, that it is not the excusing of man from 
punishment, but his recovery to holiness, which was the 
goal, and is the effect, of redemption. 

A good deal more important than these is the well- 
known passage in the Epistle to Diognetus. The 7th and 
8th chapters contain an eloquent statement of the thoughts 
(1) that the Incarnation, (and the atonement as the crown- 
ing purpose of the Incarnation,) proceeded from the Divine 
goodness of the Eternal Father, “communicated” to the 
Eternal Son,—4A otros fv pev det tovodros, kal gor, Kat gras" 
xpnords Kai dyabds Kal dédpyntos Kat dAnOis, kal pdvos ayabds éoriv’ 
evvonoas S€ peyddnv Kal apparrov évvoiav dvexowwdoato pov TO 
madi: (2) that the Incarnate was Himself the very Maker 
and Lord of all things in Heaven and earth and under 
the earth,—avrov rov texvirny Kat Syucovpydv THv ddAwv, G Tods 
ovpavods exruev, @ THY OdAacoav, x.t.A.: and (3) that this 
coming of the Creator to His sinful creatures was (against 
all human imagination of probability) not in anger, not in 
terror, not for judgment; but in gentleness and meekness, 


1 Trall. viii. 2 Rom. vii. 

3 51d Tod KAnpovomodvros SiaOjxnv Kuplov ’Inood \dBwuev. c. xiv, 

4 rds On dedaravynuévas hudy xapdlas Te Oavdrw Kal wapadedouévas rH Tis 
twrAdyns avoula AvTowoduevos éx TOD oxérous. C. xiv. 


330 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


in royal condescension, in divine love, to win, to persuade, 
to save,—dpd ye, os avOpwrwv av tis Aoyicatto, ért rupavvids Kat 
bdBw kat kararAnfer ; ovpevovv' GAN ev erteckeig Kal rpairynte ds 
Baotreds réprrov vidv Baoihéa ereupev, Ws Ocdv creupev, ds GvOpwrov 
mpods avOpdmrous erempbev, ws cwlwv ereuyev, bs TeiBwv, ov Brafd- 
pevos’ Pia yap ov mpdcerts TH OeG. erepnbev ds KadGv, od SudKwv" 
repwev Ws ayaT@v, ov Kpivov. 

These chapters supply, then, the general background 
of the thought,—how unlike the implacableness of the 
Father and the punishment of the Son! how unlike even 
to the thought of a “just” kingdom of Satan, which God 
can only invade by force or fraud!—and it is upon this 
background of thought that we come to the sentences 
which speak of the Atonement more particularly. 

“ But when the measure of our iniquity was full, and it 
had become quite plain that nothing was to be looked for 
but its due reward,—punishment and death; and the time 
was come which God had before determined to make 
manifest His own goodness and power (O surpassing kind- 
ness and love of God for man!): He hated us not, nor 
thrust us away from Him, nor remembered evil; but was 
long-suffering, was patient, in His pity took Himself our 
sins upon Him, Himself gave up His own Son as ransom 
for us,—the holy for the disobedient, the harmless for the 
harmful, the righteous for the unrighteous, the imperishable 
for the perishing, the immortal for those who were in 
death! For what besides could possibly have covered our 
sins, but only His righteousness? In whom could we, the 
disobedient and unholy, be possibly made righteous, save 
only in the Son of God? O the sweetness of the inter- 
change! O work of God beyond all searching out! O bounty 
beyond imagining! That the sinfulness of many should 
be buried in One righteous Person; and the righteous- 
ness of One should make many sinners righteous!”? 

I think it may fairly be said that, in this representation 
of the adorable wonder of the Redemption of mankind, 
the following principles may be recognized: (1) that the 
plight in which man lay was sin, sin within himself; and, 
through sin, the inherent incapacity of holiness. It is not 
how to deliver man from being treated as he deserves, but 
how to deliver him out of the deserving of death (a deserv- 

1 Ti yap Gro ras duaprlas Huay HdvvjOn KarvWar H éxelvov dixacocivn; ev 
rly SixawwOFvas Suvardy rods dvduous Huds kal dceBeis H év pdvw TH Tig rod Geod ; 
&® Tis yAukelas dvradrayijs, @ Tijs dvetixvidorou Snuovpylas, & Tov dmpocdoxjrwv 


evepyeriav* Wa dvoula pwév ToddGy év dixaly évt KpuBy dixavordyy dé évds moddovs 
dvouous Sixatdon. Ep. ad. Diog., ix, 





: 


SS 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 331 


ing from which death is inseparable); it is this which is 
the apparently insoluble problem. (2) The entire concep- 
tion and process of Redemption is, from first to last, a 
revelation of unimaginable love; a love which can only 
elicit, from men who have eyes to see it, the profoundest 
emotions of amazement and of adoration: and this love is, 
at least, not less emphatically the love of the Father, than the 
love of the Son who died. (3) The Son of God, who died, 
was absolutely righteous; and that which was efficacious 
in His death, was the sovereign power of His righteous- 
ness. Whatever, in fact, the necessity of His suffer- 
ing ; it is not upon the amount of His suffering, as suffer- 
ing, but upon the inherent and perfectly victorious character 
of the righteousness which triumphed through, and over, 
suffering, that the whole efficacy of His atonement is 
conceived as turning. (4) Whatever be the analysis of the 
explanation of it, the essential sinfulness of humanity was, 
in that sacrifice of perfect righteousness,—not ignored, not 
overlooked, not regarded as having paid its way by punish- 
ment, and so acquired a right to be tolerated, though sinful, 
but rather as merged, buried, done away, gone; and (5) 
the result is—wonder of wonders! not a fictitious imputa- 
tion, nor a dishonest treatment of the unholy as holy: but 
is the actual beauty of holiness in man. What was con- 
ceivably possible in this one way only, is, in this one way, 
an accomplished fact. “In the Son of God” man has de- 
come righteous : and God, in man, is his mind, his light, his 
glory, his strength, his life. 

It need not, of course, be said that every one of these 
things is fully drawn out; still less that every question is 
fully answered which it would occur to us to ask about 
them ; yet all these things seem to be necessary parts of 
the underlying thought of the writer of this letter, and 
what is not really consistent with these things is not 
really consistent with that conception of the atonement, 
which is more or less explicitly present to his mind. 

The different indications which we have hitherto met 
with are in the most perfect agreement with one another: 
and they constitute, it is believed, a fair statement of 
the evidence which comes from the earliest generations 
of all. It would seem therefore that we are entitled to 
take the representation which is now before us, as, on the 
negative side, in the points which it leaves unsolved, so also 

1 Abrov tryeicOa rpopéa, rarépa, diddoxadov, siupBovrorv, larpby, vodv, dds, 
Trinh, dbgav, loxdv, fwhv. Ibid. 


332 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


affirmatively, in the much more important principles which 
it instinctively postulates, as indicating not unfairly the 
most primitive and instinctive ideas about atonement in 
the post-apostolic Church. 

Hitherto there has been nothing whatever to criticize. 
We may indeed desire to ask more. But we have had 
nothing which, as a positive statement, could be a cause 
of difficulty to any one. It is afterwards, when different 
expressions about the atonement begin to be questioned 
very closely, and pressed very far, that difficulties arise ; 
and human logic begins, whether more or less, to entangle 
itself in the web of its own meshes. 


It may be well therefore to pause at this point a little, 
and, before entering upon the later developments, or the 
immediate causes of them, to remind ourselves how com- 
plex and varied are the different conceptions, and by 
consequence, the different images, which are part of the 
>xpression, in the New Testament, of the doctrine of 
the atonement; a doctrine indeed of which it would 
be no rhetorical flourish to say that, in a larger sense, 
the whole New Testament is the expression. 

Let it be remarked first of all that, to the work of 
Christ’s Redemption, which is the subject before us, 
the death on the Cross is absolutely cardinal. The death 
is not merely the ending off of the life. It would be 
less untrue to say that the life is merely the preliminary 
necessity, with a view to the death. The life exhibits much 
of the significance of the death. But the death is the great 
outcome, the crucial climax, to which the life has led up. 
This first: but secondly, though the death is cardinal, it is 
not after all the death simply as death. It is the victorious 
death, the passing through death, and conquering death 
by dying. He died who was inherent Righteousness, 
He died, who was inherent Life. The inherent life of 
righteousness in Him, whilst accepting death, shattered 
death. It is not, then, death simply, but the shattering 
of death: it is not death as an end, but death as a means 
to eternally triumphant life, which is the cardinal fact 
of which we are speaking. It is death; but it is something 
more complex than merely death; something, the full 
significance of which is not only not death, but is the 
antithesis, and annihilation, of death. We cannot possibly 
stop short on Good Friday evening. It is the Crucifixion, 





eee ee eS 


ee ee eee a ** 


io Wee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 333 


and the Resurrection and the Ascension: it is the Passion, 
and the consummation of the Victory. 

Then there are two other observations, of a partly 
preliminary kind, which it seems desirable to make. 
This complex fact of which we speak, before we ask for 
any analysis of its meaning, is broadly exhibited to us 
in scripture in these two aspects, viz. as (2) a manifest 
unveiling, to all creatures that could spiritually apprehend 
it, of the infinite wonder of the Love of God; as, eg. Rom. 
v. 6-8, viii. 31-39, xi. 33-36; I John iv. 8, sgg.; and (0) 
as the object of the faith of Christians,—a faith in which the 
very character and being of the believer is transformed, eg. 
John iii. 16, vi. 35, vii. 38, xi. 25, xii. 32, xiv. 1-29; Acts xiii. 
39, xvi. 31; 1 Cor. ii. 2; Rom. iv.; Heb. xi. 1, xii. 2, etc. 

Next, this death,—which was not death, but the crushing 
of death,—is a sacrifice, and the culmination and realization 
of all that the sacrifices of the Old Testament had but 
inchoately and imperfectly represented. Mat. xxvi. 26-28 ; 
Isaiah liii, with Acts viii. 34, sgg., and Luke xxiv, 26-27; 
1 Cor. v. 7; Heb. ix. 23-26, x. 12; Rev. v. 9, xiii. 8, etc. 

With this goes the corresponding truth that the sacrifice 
was offered by Himself; and that He, in offering it, was 
a priest: and not a priest only, but the only true and full 
realization of the meaning of priesthood. John x. 18 and 
context, xvii. I9 and context, and Hebrews passim. 

The whole meaning of Priesthood and Sacrifice becomes 
thus a part of the meaning of the sacrificial Death of 
Christ: not in the sense that Sacrifice, in Him, can be 
simply measured by what Sacrifice meant in the old 
Covenant, or before even that: but rather that all the 
lines of true tendency which are discernible as underlying, 
or implied in, the older sacrifices, must find their ultimate 
fulness of meaning in Him. All Levitical sacrifices together 
were but only an outline of what was in Him fulfilled. 
Yet their outline sketch, as far as it went, was true. And 
their lesser significance was only superseded, because it 
was absorbed, in something which included, while it trans- 
cended, them. 

More particularly, He is spoken of in the New 
Testament, in this His victorious death of sacrifice, as 
“suffering for sins,” eg. 1 Pet. iii. 18; as “bearing” sins, 
eg. Heb, ix. 28; as “made to be sin,” 2 Cor. v. 21; as 
“made a curse,” Gal. iii. 13 ;—all these phrases being along 
the line of sacrificial phraseology. 

And all this, emphatically and always, “for us.” This 


334 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


“for us” is an integral part of almost all the phrases just 
quoted; and belongs to the argument of such diverse 
passages as Rom. v. and Heb. ii. 

Sometimes, perhaps, this “for us” is expressed almost 
as if it meant as our “substitute,” “in our stead” (a sense 
which obviously contains a partial truth), as in the phrases 
Avbrpov and avtidvtpov, or in 1 Pet. ii. 24—following Isaiah 
liii. (It is observable, however, that the peculiar phrase 
“imputation,” ceases, in the R.V., to be a New Testament 
phrase. The Greek Aoyifer@a does not carry with it all the 
peculiar associations of the English “impute.”) But far 
more commonly and characteristically He is represented as 
suffering “for us,” not as a substitute, but as a representa- 
tive; not as doing something which we did not do, or 
that we might not do it; but as doing something which 
we ourselves, in Him, at once must do, and did. If the 
paradox is a startling one, it is the more worthy of fearless 
interrogation, and the less likely to be found to be weak 
or indefinite in meaning. The emphasis upon it is un- 
mistakable, Rom. vi. 4-8, and viii. 17; Gal. ii. 20; Eph. ii. 
5-6; Col. ii. 13 and iii. 3; 2 Tim. ii. 11, 12, ete. 

Besides all this, there are various more or less meta- 
phorical expressions under which the character of Christ’s 
atoning act is described. Thus: 

He is our Redemption—as Rom. iii. 24; 1 Cor. i. 30; 
Gal. iii. 13; Eph. i. 7; Col. i. 14; 1 Pet. i. 18. 

He is our Ransom—as Mat. xx. 28; Mark. x. 45; 
1 Tim. ti. 6. 

He is our Deliverance or Recovery from Satan and the 
power of darkness,—as Col. i. 13; 2 Tim. ii. 26; cp. Acts 
xxvi. 18. 

These three terms, (the first two of which are not really 
distinguishable in the Greek,) are all unmistakably meta- 
phors, expressing, under the similitude of certain familiar 
earthly forms of rescue, what the atoning act effects 
for man, in relation to that out of which he is rescued 
by it. 

“ Again He is our Propitzation—as Rom. iii. 25 ; 1 John ii. 
2; Heb. ii. 17 (R.V.) 

He is our Reconciliation—as Rom. v. 10, 11; 2 Cor. v. 
18, 19, 20; Eph. ii. 16; Col. i. 22. 

Heis our /ustzficatzon—as Acts xiii. 39 ; Rom. iii. 24, 26, 
30, iv. 5, 25, v. 9, vill. 30; 1 Cor. vi. 11; Gal. ii. 16, iii, 24. 

These three terms may be taken, in the main, as ex- 
pressing, more or less under earthly metaphor, the 


{4 


: 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 335 


alteration made in man’s condition, in respect of his 
relation to the eternal and immovable Holiness of God. 

But the term Justification is too many-sided to be 
brought under any single category. If it expresses 
partly a process of change—it expresses also an inherent 
condition—which is the result of the process. There 
is no ultimate distinction between to “justify” and to 
“make righteous”; between man’s being pronounced 
righteous by the Truth of God, and man’s being, in the 
Truth of God, righteous; between, therefore, God’s 
“justification” and the “righteousness” of man. For 
this reason I deliberately repeat the word in a further 
group. Once more, then, 

He is our Justification (as above). 

He is our Righteousness—as 1 Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 21; 
cp. Jer. xxiii. 6, xxxili. 16. 

He is our Sanctification—as 1 Cor. i. 30; Heb. ii, 11, 
xX. 10, I4, Xili. 12. 

He is our Peace—Eph. ii. 14. 

He is our Lz/—Rom. viii. 2; Gal. ii. 20; Phil. i. 21; 
Col. iii. 3,4; 1 John i. 2. 

Now in this last set of terms we have plainly passed,— 
but passed by imperceptible transition, because there is in 
fact no real line of difference or distinction—from descrip- 
tions of His act regarded under metaphorical similitudes 
as a transaction about us, but external to ourselves: 
into language which, not metaphorically but literally 
and directly, characterizes it as an essential transformation 
within, and of, ourselves. He is victorious Righteousness 
within, and as, ourselves. } 

1 If any one will look out in a concordance the words just, justify, justifica- 
tion, justice, justifier, righteous, make righteous, righteousness, and see how 
these words bulk in the Old Testament and the New; and then remember 
that they are not two groups of words, but only in fact grammatical variations 
of one single word, and thought, in Greek; he will begin to realize the 
unreality of any rigidly technical definitions of the word in any of its forms. 

The verb, for instance, which is translated ‘‘ to justify” Suxacovv, occurs 
some fifteen times from the 3rd to the 8th of Romans. What does the 
word mean? On the one hand, the -ow termination, as in xpvedw, rupdAdw, 
modenow, olkerdw, Sovdw, éAevdepdw, etc., is associated with the meaning ‘‘ to 
make” so and so. On the other hand in received usage it is easily shown 
that d:cac6w, and some kindred words, are found only (or almost only) with 
the sense of ‘‘ pronouncing” or ‘‘accounting” righteous. But is the dis- 
tinction really valid? In human experience to ‘‘ make righteous,” literally, is 
an impossibility. Therefore the verb which is, in form, ‘‘to make righteous,” 
can mean only, in practice, to pronounce, or regard, or treat as being so. 
But on the other hand, is it possible that when any one is pronounced, or 


regarded, or treated as righteous dy the very truth of God, his being so 
pronounced can be, in its full or proper meaning, dissevered from his so being? 


336 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


It will be felt, then, upon the whole survey, that we 
cannot possibly stop short of finding our climax in those 
passages which express, in its own characteristic language— 
the language at once of revelation and of experience—this 
transforming mystery of His Presence within ourselves. It 
is the extension,—which is also the effectiveness,—of the 
Incarnation ; it is the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ ; 
it is, in a word, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. 

I must ask to have it particularly observed that this is 
not a magnificent sequel, separable in kind from the atone- 
ment, and from the exposition of it. It is the necessary 
climax of the doctrine of the atonement; a climax without 
which atonement is not yet explicable, because it is not 
yet real, to experience, which is the only perfect knowledge. 

I must add, then, as the culmination of our third group 
of terms, that He is the Spirit of our spirit, the only 
ultimate and essential reality of ourselves, as Rom. viii. 2, 
9, 11, 13, 23; 1 Cor. vi. 17, xv. 45; 2 Cor. 9 teen 
2, iv. 6; 1 John iii. 24, iv. 13; cp. John vii. 38, 39. 


Upon this slight sketch of the living depth and com- 


His righteousness may be still provisional and unconsummated. But it is a 
reality, not a fiction, even if an inchoate and provisional reality, in reference 
to which God pronounces the verdict ‘‘righteous.” And if He pronounces _ 
righteous what was certainly not righteous before; could ‘“‘ making” be 
excluded from the import of the Divine act of ‘‘ pronouncing” righteous, 
even if the word used were verbally limited, with the utmost distinctiveness, 
to *‘ pronouncing?” But if, further, the word for ‘‘ pronouncing righteous” 
has itself a grammatical form which would’ suggest primarily ‘‘ making 
righteous” (although the limitations of human possibility had confined it to 
“pronouncing” in current human usage,) by what right can we be assured 
that ‘‘ making righteous” is still no part of the meaning of the word, when it 
is used of Him in whom to “ pronounce” zs to ‘‘make”? To me it seems 
impossible for any man to say to how large an extent the underlying suggestive- 
ness of the verbal form in -6w, z.e. the thought of ‘‘ making righteous,” is, or is 
not, consciously present, wherever the word is used of God’s dealings with 
man. I doubt whether the consciousness that the word is, in form, ‘* making 
righteous” is ever wholly absent from the mind of St Paul throughout these 
chapters; however often it may (possibly) be true that ‘‘ pronouncing right- 
eous” is nearer to the centre of his overt logic, and therefore, perhaps, more 
defensible, or secure, as translation. But ‘‘ pronounce righteous” would not 
always be applicable as translation ; and “‘ justify” only seems to cover the 
ground better, so far as it still retains some ambiguity, and does not exclude 
‘making righteous” from the form of the expression. 

I have said this at the greater length, partly, at least, in defence of my 
own translation of dicawwO7jvar in the passage quoted above, on p. 330, from 
the Epist. ad Diognetum. I do not believe that any rendering in English 
of its final clause would be adequate, which said less than that ‘‘ the righteous- 
ness of One should make many sinners righteous”; which is exactly the 
assertion of Rom. v. I9. 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 337 


plexity of the doctrine as it appears in Holy Scripture, it 
seems obvious to remark that no one with any ordinary 
modesty, that is with any ordinary insight into truth, 
would expect to be able to exhaust in thought,—still less 
to exhaust in simple logical statement,—the whole scope 
of its truth, A simple logical formula for atonement 
would be no more probable than a simple logical formula 
for experience of personality. Of course it does not follow 
that atonement, any more than personality, is to remain a 
contradictory or unintelligible conception. On the con- 
trary, intelligence of it, in that insight of experience, which 
is the highest form of intelligence, is an inherent necessity 
of human consciousness. Human intelligence, in its higher 
forms, cannot but be continuously working upon, and 
towards, the realization of it. And meanwhile every im- 
pediment to its intelligence, which human logic has reared, 
in its perverseness or in its incompetence, must by human 
logic be tested and done away. To every generation of 
Christians it must be explained, and be intelligible. But 
it is not at all probable, a przorz, that any generation of 
Christians will exhaust the depth of its significance. And 
it is not at all surprising if that (almost necessarily) partial 
conception of it, which is most intelligible to one genera- 
tion, should fail to match precisely the necessities of the 
intelligent experience of another. For so profound, and 
so far back at the root of personal experience, are the 
essential facts which the word atonement sums up, that 
the doctrine itself remains, and will remain, something 
more and truer than the largest and truest explications 
of it in human imagery and human language. These do 
reflect it, vitally and really enough, to those whose natural 
language and imagery they are. But they are less than it, 
and cannot express it fully to all minds in all times. There 
is a sense in which every Church period,—there is a sense 
perhaps in which every Church member,—must find its 
living interpretation, in his own terms, for himself. 

I am tempted to illustrate this matter by a sentence, 
written on a widely different subject in a paper printed in 
the Guardian of 21st March 1900. “Surely,” writes the 
Dean of Christ Church, “the De Monarchié illustrates 
admirably the truth that the connection between argu- 
ments and conclusions is apt to be much less, much 
slenderer, than those who argue think. Most men, and 
more women, are more reasonable than their reasonings ; 
they stand on stronger ground than they rely on. They 

Y 


338 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


apprehend truth by a hidden complex, subtle, unanalysed 
process, all the while that they think themselves to be 
reaching out after it and striving towards it by explicit 
arguments which are artificial and inconclusive, needing far 
more support than they can yield.” Something like this 
has been true, of theological, as well as of popular, exposi- 
tions of the doctrine of Atonement. Probably no genera- 
tion of Christians has ever really been at fault in its 
instinctive apprehension of the Atonement,—its essential 
nature, and its cardinal place, in Christian thought and 
life. But there have been expositions of it, in many 
generations, of which other generations have clearly dis- 
cerned the essentially inconclusive, and, in some cases, 
untenable character. The current expositions of it have 
been, in their own setting, and for their own purpose, true, 
not false. But it has always lain deeper than the current 
expositions of it. 

On the basis of this reflection, which appears to me to 
rise directly out of any survey of the mode of the present- 
ment of the doctrine in the New Testament, it may be 
useful to go back a little to the variety of New Testament 
imagery. Besides all the more direct teaching about it in 
terms of Sacrifice and Priesthood, (which have, it is to be 
remembered, their own wonderful vista behind them of 
age-long teaching, worked in, as it were, to the very life- 
blood of Israel by ritual and worship, the most immemorial 
and august); it will be remembered that we distinguished 
three groups of phrases, by which the work of Christ’s 
Sacrifice, and Christ Himself as the Sacrifice, and the 
worker of it, are in different passages deliberately de- 
scribed. The first set were mainly vivid metaphors. He 
was our Redemption, our Ransom, our Deliverance. 

Now, as a matter of fact, the chief difficulties about the 
doctrine of atonement, for many centuries, rose out of the 
over-technical emphasis which was laid on these three 
words. If He was our Redemption, from whom did He 
buy us back? what price did He pay? by what right was 
the price due? and by what reckoning did it constitute a 
due equivalent? If He was our Ransom, to whom was 
the ransom given? If to the devil, what right had the 
devil to a ransom? or if he had the right to receive a 
ransom, why not to retain it? how did he accept a ransom 
which gave him nothing? If to God, in what sense did 
God hold us captive? or Christ purchase us from God? 
Again, If He was our Deliverance out of captivity, what 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 339 


was the nature of the right under which we were held 
captive? what was the relation of the devil’s dominion to 
God’s dominion? and the precise justice or forbearance 
of God which prevented Him from delivering us by force? 
Obviously it is easy to multiply questions like these, and 
obviously they pass very quickly from being inquiries into 
truth, and become mere entanglements of error. Why so? 
Because a spiritual truth is expressed under a similitude 
of physical life; and because the similitude, though really 
illustrating the spiritual truth in the central point for the 
sake of which it-was used, yet involves certain corollaries 
in the physical life, to which it cannot be assumed that 
there are spiritual parallels. Rkansom was most familiar to 
the ancient world. When, at a great cost, Christ won us 
back from death to life, He did something which was made 
luminous to the thought of our fathers, by the use of the 
word ransom. But ransom involves a payment made to 
some other person: and involves the admission of his 
power, or his right, or both, to accept—or to refuse—either 
any ransom at all, or the adequacy of this particular 
ransom. In these particulars the suggested analogy broke 
down. And just in so far as these particulars were in- 
sisted on, the phrase “ransom,” which had been luminous 
for truth, became a false light, misleading into error. This 
is to make false use of a true similitude. 

So again, to speak of the dominion of darkness and sin 
and Satan is to speak of what human experience knows 
to be true. But directly corollaries are drawn from the 
phrase, and Satan becomes a quasi-independent sovereign, 
with rights of tenure and possession which it would be an 
injustice not to respect ; the earthly setting of the simili- 
tude has been so misused, that truth has been clouded, 
after all, by a word which was, nevertheless, even obviously, 
true. In other words, these metaphors are illuminative 
up to a certain point, but they cannot be pressed into all 
corollaries. 

It may be worth while at this point to draw some ex- 
press distinction between different sets of phrases which 
may alike be said to be metaphorical. The same word 
covers several different things. Most words that are really 
profound are metaphorical in origin: that is, they begin 
with a concrete, bodily, and go on to a more abstract and 
spiritual, sense. Grace is primarily beauty of physical 
shape. Sin is primarily a missing of a mark. Words of 
grief or sorrow belong primarily to the physical sensation, 


340 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


or physical expression, of pain. Father, Son, Spirit: it is 
obvious that every one of these words has an ordinary 
earthly significance first, which is pre-supposed, when it 
is taken over to serve a profounder purpose. It is obvious 
also that as, in the religious consciousness, the significance 
of such words deepens, the original physical sense is more 
and more left behind ; even though the two senses of the 
word, the religious and the physical, may remain in 
common usage side by side. So obvious is this in the 
case of a great multitude of phrases, that the mind is no 
longer, in fact, in the least perplexed, by the scenery or 
circumstances of the original literalness of the word. It 
is so with almost all of the words just quoted. The words 
Father and Son are perhaps a partial exception. But if 
in the words Father and Son there are contained some 
ideas which Christian thought has historically had very 
serious difficulty in eliminating from its use of the words 
(the idea, most of all, of the necessary posteriority of a 
son); there are, no doubt, other ideas which have never 
even presented themselves to Christian thought. It is or 
some importance to claim even words like these as, in 
their origin, resemblances borrowed from physical ex- 
perience. The words would only caricature and degrade 
spiritual consciousness if their meaning were constantly 
brought back to the limits of the original physical ex- 
perience; yet that experience is sufficiently parallel to 
spiritual consciousness to furnish verbal vehicles for its 
expression, which are in a rudimentary way from the first, 
and can be made in Christian usage to become more and 
more progressively, illuminative of spiritual truth. 

But besides such words as sin, and grace, and spirit, 
the significance of which has been, in fact, indefinitely 
altered and expanded by spiritual use, there are others 
which have been spiritually adopted up to a certain point ; 
yet their meaning is rather determined by the earthly, than 
the spiritual, method of their use. To this class belong 
- words like Ransom, or Rescue from Captivity. (Redemp- 
tion has perhaps passed out of this class except when its 
meaning is very closely cross-examined.) And it is because 
these words remain primarily, after all, words of human 
circumstance; that minds have been so often perplexed 
as to the precise amount of human circumstance which 
is to be introduced into the spiritual significance of the 
words. 

Other phrases there are, also plainly in a sense “meta- 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 341 


phorical,” which may not, at first sight, seem clearly to 
belong to the one, or the other, of these classes. The 
phrases which speak of Christ’s work of love (or the 
love of Christians working in the Spirit of Christ) in 
specific terms of the ritual of sacrifice: the phrase of 
the third of St John, in which Christ Himself insists, with 
what strikes us at first as a needless rigour of literalness, 
upon using precisely the language of natural birth in 
reference to the spiritual changedness of man’s nature in 
Him: the phrases of the sixth of St John, in which again 
the permanent relation of the believer to Christ is not 
allowed to be described in any terms less physically 
startling than those of eating His flesh and drinking 
His blood: these are instances in point. If all such 
language as this is undoubtedly, in a sense, “ meta- 
phorical”; yet no one, with the least sense of reverence, 
or the most superficial power of insight into the spiritual 
which lies behind, and illumines, and interprets the 
natural; would dream of supposing that by the use of 
that adjective he could rid himself of the responsibility, 
inseparable from spiritual intelligence, of learning to discern 
the wide sweep, the amazing directness, and the profound 
depth of its fundamental—we can only say, after all, its 
literal,—truth. 

Jt would be, of course, outside our present scope to 
go into these in detail. But it seemed important, while 
dwelling on the word metaphor, and disowning- some 
misconceptions of atonement which have arisen through 
failure to recognize the limitations to which metaphor 
may be liable; that we should guard ourselves against 
the very appearance of sharing in that extreme super- 
ficiality of thought, which would confuse all degrees of 
metaphor together, or fancy that whatever can be called 
metaphorical can have only such remote analogy with 
truth, that it may be, for practical purposes of argument, 
set aside as unimportant, if not untrue. 

There are words which were originally, and are in a 
sense, metaphorical, in which we can plainly see that it 
is the original, physical, or “literal” sense, which is but a 
pale suggestion, a faint analogue, of the truth of their full 
significance: while the spiritual and so-called “meta- 
phorical” meaning is the supreme and inclusive reality. 
What is the literal auapria to the full meaning of “sin”? 
or the etymological 9cds or Deus to the ultimate content 
of the word “God”? Spiritual is far more than physical 


342 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


“hunger”; and spiritual than merely natural “ birth.” 
While to dismiss the Eucharistic mystery as metaphor, 
though there is a sense in which the word is not 
verbally untrue, is simply to close up the faculties by 
which alone all profounder truth is discerned. 

But to return. The untenable elements of thought 
which were often introduced into the theological explana- 
tion of the atonement (itself substantially always held 
in truth) from Origen to Anselm, and from Anselm 
to Luther, may be broadly said to have arisen out of 
exaggerated or disproportioned use of such metaphorical 
phrases as Redemption, Ransom, and Deliverance out of 
the dominion of Satan. The untenable elements of 
thought which have been too often characteristic of the 
atoning theories of popular Protestantism, may be said 
to have arisen out of a still more mischievous misuse of 
such phrases as those which constituted our second group, 
Propitiation, Reconciliation, and Justification. Out of 
these words have been drawn—perversely enough—the 
conceptions of an enraged Father, a victimized Son, the 
unrighteous punishment of the innocent, the unrighteous 
reward of the guilty, the transfer of innocence and guilt 
by fictitious imputation, the adroit settlement of an 
artificial difficulty by an artificial, and strictly irrelevant, 
transaction. 

As to the third group of phrases classified above,— 
Christ our Justification, our Righteousness, our Sancti- 
fication, our Peace, our Life, the indwelling Spiritual 
reality of ourselves; we shall not indeed have to 
complain that they have been made the basis for 
perverse corollaries as to what Christ did in redeeming 
the world from sin: but rather that, in the attempt to 
compass in thought what Christ did as Redeemer of the 
world, they have been strangely allowed to drop out of 
sight. It is not of course suggested that they have 
dropped out of sight-in all contexts or for all purposes. 
Yet in no respect probably have they played a part in 
modern Christian thought at all comparable to their 
prominence in the New Testament,—that is, in the 
thought and life of the apostles. And probably one 
direct reason for their diminished place in general Chris- 
tian thought will be found to be the fact that they have 
so well-nigh completely disappeared from their place in 
the exposition of the doctrine of atonement: and have 
lost thereby not a little of what would otherwise have 





ta ee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 343 


been felt to belong to their own full proportion and 
significance, 


The over-detailed use of the metaphors of the first 
group, is traced back by Mr Oxenham, in his history of 
the Catholic doctrine of the Atonement, to Irenzus and 
Origen. I am not concerned to criticize Mr Oxenham’s 
statement. But it seems to me very easy to exaggerate 
the place which was really held, in the thought of such 
writers, by their own exegetical theories or suggestions, 
Even where a false exegetical theory of atonement has 
been most dominant, the real vital relation to atonement 
of personal human experience does not seem to have 
been generally obscured. And whatever may be traced 
back to the suggestive words of early Fathers, it would 
be very difficult to maintain that any false exegetical 
theory was in any real possession of the field for many 
generations after Irenzeus and Origen. No teacher, per- 
haps, of varied mind and rich imagination, has had strong 
hold of any vital truth of experience, which he has not 
sometimes expounded or illustrated by modes of thought 
which proved in the end untenable. This is just the sort 
of thing which seems to be true, in this matter, of Irenzeus 
and Origen. Their essential interpretation is scriptural 
and true. But they use phrases, in enforcing and illus- 
trating it, which we, in reference to the history of later 
exaggerations, may not unreasonably feel to be unguarded. 
The passages quoted by Mr Oxenham from Irenzus 
amount really to very little. The principal passage is 
c. Hereses V.i. It contains indeed one or two phrases, 
which suggest hard questions, and require explanation ; 
in particular what it was that the “justice” of God 
required in His dealing with the “apostasy,” ze. the 
kingdom of Satan, or why He showed justice in “buying 
back” men therefrom without violence,—or what details 
the “buying” presupposes. But the questions are not 
asked and answered: still less answered in any crude 
or offensive form.! 


1 «* Et quoniam injuste dominabatur nobis apostasia, et cum natura essemus 
Dei omnipotentis, alienavit nos contra naturam, suos proprios faciens discipulos; 
potens in omnibus Dei Verbum, et non deficiens in sua justitia, juste etiam 
adversus ipsam conversus est apostasiam, ea quz sunt sua redimens ab ea non 
cum vi, quemadmodum illa initio dominabatur nostri, ea que non erant sua 
insatiabiliter rapiens ; sed secundum suadelam, quemadmodum decebat Deum 


344 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Meanwhile on the other side it is right to remember 
that Irenzus has the clearest possible hold of the essential 
Christian principle that humanity is a corporate whole; 
that Christ is not an infinitesimal part, but the consummat- 
ing whole, of humanity: and that, by consequence, Christ’s 
atoning acts were not so much acts done by Him instead 
of us, as acts which, in His doing them, we all did. The 
image contained in the word “recapitulatio” is character- 
istic of his thought. “He summed up in Himself the 
whole long series of humanity, and so in a single concen- 
trated achievement brought salvation to us, that what we 
had lost in Adam, ze. to be in the image and likeness of 
God,—we might regain in Christ Jesus.” He says in- 
deed more than this; for in words not unlike those of 
Athanasius afterwards, he insists that He, the Word, 
had never been dissevered from the race of mankind. 
—“Qui et semper aderat generi humano.”! Thus the 
Incarnation and its consequences are themselves in line 
with the inherent connection between the Logos and 
humanity. “Quando incarnatus est, et homo factus, 
longam hominum expositionem in se ipso recapitulavit, in 
compendio nobis salutem przstans, ut quod perdideramus 
in Adam, id est, secundum imaginem et similitudinem esse 
Dei, hoc in Christo Jesu reciperemus.” ? 

Elsewhere, the obedience unto death, and the ascension 
unto life, are expressly predicated not of Him in contrast 
with us, but of “our race,” of “ourselves.” €v pév yap TO mpdTw 
"Addy mporekdpapev, pr) Tomoravres adrov tiv évtrodynv: év Se TO 
Sevrepp ’Addu, aroxarndAdynpev, drjKoor péxpt Oavdrov yevduevor® 
Here the parallelism with Adam is complete: and “we” 
were obedient unto death in Christ, as vitally and as really 
as we sinned in Adam. 

So again “It is for this that the Lord confesses Himself 
the Son of Man, summing up again into Himself that 
original man, out of whom the whole propagation by 


suadentem, et non vim inferentem, accipere que vellet; ut neque quod 
est justum confringeretur, neque antiqua plasmatio Dei deperiret.” V. i. 1. 
In the 21st chapter, Mr Oxenham seems to me to introduce, in his English 
translation, a definiteness of imagery which is wanting in the Latin. ‘‘ The 
‘ price’ of our disobedience in Adam was paid by Christ’s obedience” is a far 
more commercial statement than “‘soluta est ea... preevaricatio.” ‘* Price” 
is the really emphatic word; and there is no such word in the Latin at all. 
‘*Was cancelled,” or simply ‘‘ was done away,” would probably represent 
‘*soluta est” better. Compare the previous uses of ‘‘dissoluta est” in the 
same chapter. 

1 Cp. the Athanasian ofr: ye waxpay av mpérepov, infra, p. 349. 

3c. Heer., III. xviii. 1. 3c. Her., V. xvi. 3. 


Te ee ee ee a re 


~~ ee Pee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 345 


woman came; that as, through man conquered, our whole 
race went down into death, so, through man conquering, we 
might ascend unto life.” “Propter hoc et Dominus semet- 
ipsum Filium hominis confitetur, principalem hominem 
illum ex quo ea quze secundum mulierem est plasmatio facta 
est in semetipsum recapitulans; uti quemadmodum per 
hominem victum descendit in mortem genus nostrum, sic 
iterum per hominem victorem ascendamus in vitam.”? 

It is in the light of these utterances, and as a climax 
to them, that I would finally point to the conclusion of 
that very passage which was just now referred to as 
raising, no doubt, questions of perplexity. Here it is 
taught most explicitly that the real outcome of God’s 
identification with man in the Person of the Incarnate, is 
the real union and communion of man with God,—God by 
the Spirit condescending to man, that man by the 
Incarnation might be brought to God; and that the 
method of the realization of this union and communion, in 
which alone the work of recovery is complete, is the out- 
pouring of the Spirit of the Father. “Suo igitur sanguine 
redimente nos Domino, et dante animam suam pro nostra 
anima et carnem suam pro nostris carnibus (rHv Yuyx7v irép 
TOV HueTepwv Yrvyov Kal TV OdpKa THY EavTOU avTL TOV HpETEpwV 
gapxov), et effundente Spiritum Patris in adunitionem et 
communionem Dei et hominis, ad homines quidem de- 
ponente Deum per Spiritum, ad Deum autem rursus 
imponente hominem per suam incarnationem, et firme et 
vere in adventu suo donante nobis incorruptelam per com- 
munionem quz est ad eum.” ? 

Such teaching as this, strong and positive and clear, is 
not really affected by the use of one or two phrases, in 
another direction, of ambiguous, or even, (if any one chooses 
to think so,) of indefensible meaning. 

Origen goes, no doubt, somewhat further than Irenzeus. 
On this,—as on many other subjects,—he expresses himself 
rather with freedom and force, than with any extreme 
guardedness of thought or phrase. But here too it is 
easy to exaggerate his meaning. Or rather here too it 
is clear, that however little we may defend, in all cases, 
the way in which he puts it, his essential meaning is true, 
alike to scripture and to experience. Such ideas as a 
deception of Satan, practised by God, are really foreign 
to the essence of his thought. It is no part of the present 
purpose to scrutinize closely such expressions. They are 

1¢, Her., V. xxi. I, 2c, Heer., V. i. 1. 


346 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


there of course. But it may be doubted whether they 
carried, to Origen or his readers, a picture at all so definite 
as they carry to us. And it is worth while, on the other 
hand, to notice how clearly many elements of a very 
different conception of atonement are all the while insisted 
on by Origen. 

Notice first that whatever His death involved or meant 
it was His own act. He was not given up to die by the 
Father any more than by Himself. Thus after quoting 
Rom. viii. 32, “He that spared not His own Son, but 
delivered Him up for us all,” Origen adds: ‘ é€wxe 8 xat 6 
Yids trép jyadv éavrdv eis Odvarov, date od pdvov trd Tod Llarpds 
GAXAA Kal tp’ EavToU apeddOn.’ } 

Secondly, the offering of His life to death is expressly 
spoken of as a valuable price, given as purchase-money 
for the souls of men. dvOpwros pév ody otk av Sdy Tt avrdd- 
Aaypa THs Wux7s adTov, Oeds S tov Tavrwv Hpav Yuyis avTdd- 
Aaypa wxe Td Tipsov afua tod Incot, ka? 5 tipys yyopdoOnper, 
ov PUaprois apyupiy 7) xpvolw drohvtpwlertes, GAAG Timi aipatt, 
Gs duvov dudpov Kal doriAov Xpiocrov.2 This of course is 
strictly scriptural. But as to the meaning it bore to the 
mind of Origen, notice, 

Thirdly, that this suffering of His is not, in strictness of 
thought, so much a vicarious suffering, that we might not 
suffer, as an enabling suffering, that we might be able to 
suffer in one way and not in another,—with one spirit and 
meaning, and not with another,—accepting suffering as 
salutary discipline, not enduring it as vengeance. 

“He gave His back to the scourges, and His cheeks to 
the hands of the smiters, He hid not His face from the 
shame of spitting, that, as I suppose, He might deliver 
us who had deserved to suffer all these infamies, suffering 
them Himself for us. For He did not die in order that we 
may not die, but that we may not die for ourselves; and 
He was stricken and spat upon for us, in order that we, 
who had really deserved these things, may not have to 
suffer them as a return for our sins, but suffering them 
instead for righteousness’ sake, may receive them with 
gladness of heart.” 

1In Mat. Tom. xiii. 8, Vol. III. p. 580. 

a eee i. 18, with r Cor. vi. 20. In Mat. Tom. xii. 28, Vol. III. 

Non enim mortuus est pro nobis, ut nos non moriamur, sed ut pro nobis 
non moriamur ; et alapis czesus est pro nobis, et exputus est, ut ne nos, qui digni 
fueramus omnibus his, propter nostra peccata patiamur ea, sed ut pro justitia 


patientes ea gratanter excipiamus. In Mat. Comment., series 113, Vol. III. 
p. 912. al. Tract. xxxv. 


SR SP oe 


—— 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 347 


Fourthly, notice that death itself, so far from being the 
ultimate expression of punishment, is expressive rather 
of the precise opposite. It expresses the voluntary 
penance which cleanses from sin, as contrasted with the 
curse which seals the damnation of sin. This thought puts 
at once a new meaning upon the blood of Christ as the 
purchase of our souls. 

“It remains to be shown that to possess sin, and have it 
in oneself, is a far graver thing than to receive the penalty 
of death. Death inflicted for sin is a purging of the sin for 
which it is commanded to be inflicted. The sin, then, is ab- 
solved in the penalty of death, nor is anything left, so far 
as that guilt is concerned, for the judgment day or the pain 
of eternal fire. But when any one is made to possess his 
sin, he carries it about with him, and it makes its abode in 
him; the penalty that has never been inflicted has never 
been, by infliction, done away; it is with the man even 
after death ; and he who has not paid the penalty in time 
pays it in eternity. You see how far heavier it is to possess 
one’s sin, than to suffer the penalty of death.... Sonow 
if there be any one of us who recalls in himself the con- 
sciousness of sin, ... let him fly to penitence, and accept 
a voluntary doing to death of the flesh, that, cleansed from 
sin during this present life, our spirit may find its way, 
clean and pure, to Christ.” ! 

This express recognition even of death inflicted for sin, 
as having the character rather of penance than penalty ; as 
a means, not an end; as a method to life, not a consum- 
mation of death: and at the same time, of the intimate 
connection between this its morally regenerating power, 
and what is to be after all, on analysis, its essentially self- 
chosen character, a voluntary self-surrender to the ex- 
treme self-contradiction of penitence ; is, in all ways, most 
suggestive. 

In context, then, with these thoughts, and as interpreted 
by them, notice, Fifthly, that the death which He suffered is 
spoken of as the chastisement or discipline which was due 
to us—not for our destruction, but for our instruction, not 
that we might be made an appalling example, but that 
we might be able to receive peace. Such a death,—so 
righteously humble, obedient, voluntary, was the abolition, 
not the consummation, of judgment. “So it was that He 
took our sins and was bruised for our iniquities, and the 
chastisement which was owing to us that we might be 

1In Levit. Hom. xiv. 4, Vol. II. p. 260, 


348 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


instructed and receive peace fell upon him ;! for this is 
how I understand ‘the chastisement of our peace was 
upon Him.’ ... So in His humiliation, wherewith He 
humbled Himself, being made obedient unto death, even 
the death of the Cross, the judgment was taken away ; for 
this is how I understand ‘In His humiliation His judg- 
ment was taken away.’”? 

And finally, notice that with Origen, as with the others, 
and as with St Paul, we corporately do what Christ did for 
us, being fashioned into reality of partnership alike with 
His death, and with His resurrection: the result being our 
own personal walking in newness of life, because of the 
light of God, which thereby has risen upon us, It is a real 
emancipation, from darkness and slavery, into life. 

‘Ore yap cippoppot yivopeba TO Oavdér@ Tod Xpurrov, ovKere 
eopev vd Tovs Seo povs Tov ds darodeSxaypuev Baorhéwy 7s Ys, obs? 
bd TOV Adyov TOV KaTo TOU _Kopiov cuvax Gevrov dpxSyTov TOU 
aidvos tovrov. Kat ua tovro 6 Tarp TOU idtov Yiot ovk édeicaro, 
dW? brép Hpov ravTwv mapedwxev atroy, tv’ ot tapadaPovres avrov 
Kal mapadédvres atrov eis xetpas av Opry, brd TOU KaTOLKHOTAVTOS 
€v Tots ovpavots eyychac Boor, Kat bd Too _Kupiov expukTnpis Vac, 
eis KaTaéAvoww THs idias BartAr€ias Kat apxs Tapa poo doxiay Ta.pa- 
AaBdvres dd rod Ilarpds rdv Yidv, doris tH Tpity HuEpa HyéepOn, 
T@ Tov €xOpov adTod Odvarov KarnpynKéva, Kal npas merounKevat 
Tuppoppovs, od pdvov Tov Oavdrov adTov GAAG Kal THs avacrdcews, 
Sv’ dv év Kawvdrnts THS (wns mepuTarovper, odKeTe KaHe(pevor ev YOpPG 
kat oxia Oavarov, Sia To avaretAav ef’ Huas hos To Oeov,® 


We have lingered, perhaps a little unnecessarily, upon 
these words of Irenzus and Origen, because it is to 
Irenzus and Origen that the first introduction has been 
referred of conceptions which rather obscured, than illumin- 
ated, the intelligence of the vital truth of the Atonement. 
It is not probable that the thought either of Irenzeus, or 
even of Origen, was greatly dominated by such conceptions. 
But how little way any such conceptions really went in 
the direction of obscuring—even if they found place in 
over-logical attempts to elucidate—the essential doctrine, 
or the essential hold of Catholic theology upon it, may 
perhaps be made clearer, if, without any attempt to follow 
more precisely the course of the history, we pass from 


1 In Joann. Tom. xxviii. 14, Vol. IV. p. 393. 
2H dderouévn tiv els 7d masdevOjvar kat elphvnv dvadaBeiv Kdd\aors em” adrov 


yeyévnra. Kéddacis not molvy, discipline, not vengeance, as Mr Oxenham - 


remarks. 
In Mat. Tom. xiii. Vol. III. p. 583. 





Pale a ee ee ee a ee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 349 


Irenzus and Origen to the writings of Athanasius. For 
though Athanasius did not write a formal treatise on the 
doctrine of atonement, yet his teaching on the subject 
comes out, with the greatest spontaneity and freshness, 
in his exposition of the Incarnation, and his vindication of 
its true purpose and meaning, amid the stress of Arian 
controversy. From the teaching of Athanasius it is 
abundantly clear that at least in, and to the middle of, 
the fourth century of our era, there were no real obscurities 
or perversions which could be said to be attached, with 
anything like either official sanction, or general popular 
acceptance, to the view of the doctrine of atonement in 
the Catholic Church. 

The following are the points which seem to emerge in 
the Athanasian thought upon the subject. 

First there is the inherent connection between the 
Redeemer and His creation which He came to redeem. 
The relationship of created man to God, the eternal Logos, 
did not begin in the fact of the Incarnation; but the fact 
of the Incarnation grew, as it were naturally, out of it. As 
in the Person of the Eternal Logos God created man, so 
by inherent aptness, it was in the Person of the Eternal 
Logos that God restored man to life. 

Ovdey yap évdvriov pavycera, ci dv oF tavryv enmovpynow 4 
Tlarnp, év aitG Kat THY TavTys owrypiav cipydoaro. 

The human race was made “Aoyxév’ in the image of the 
Logos of God. Kara riv éavrod eixdva éroinoe aitods, peraddus 
avrois Kal THs Tod idiov Adyou Suvépews, va domwep oKids Twas exovrTes 
tod Adyov Kai yevopuevot AoytKol . - . etc.” 

He, the Logos, was never really separate from the human 
race: nor could the love of the Creator leave Eris creation 
to be obliterated, and as it were stultified, in the ruin of 
sin. 

Tovrov dy Evexev 6 dowparos Kal dpOapros Kal diAos ToD Oeod Adyos 
mapayiverat eis THY Hmerépav Xopay, oit. ye paxpav dv mpdrepov. 
Ovdev yap abrod Kevov trodéAevrran THs KTicews pépos’ wavra 8? dd 
mdvTov TexAnpwKey aitos cuvev TS éavtod Tlarpi. “AAG wapayiverat 
ovyxataBaivuy tH «is Huds adrod ditavOpwria Kal émipaveia. Kat 
iddv TO AoyiKdv droAdipevov yévos, Kat tiv Odvarov Kat’ adrod 
Baorevovta TH pOopa: spay St kal rHv awedijy Tis rapaBdcews 
Staxparotoav tiv Kal juav pOopday, Kai dtu Grorwov fw mpd Tod 
arypwhijvar tov vopov AvOjva, dpdv Se Kal 1d daperis & 7h 
ovpBeBykdr1, drt dv adrds hy Syuuotpyos, radra rapynpaviero, etc.3 

This kinship of the human mind or soul with the Logos, 


1 De Inc. ii, 2 De Inc. iii. 3 De Inc. viii. 


350 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


was not only a past fact, which moved the compassion of 
the Logos to save: it was also the capacity in man of being 
saved—that is of receiving, and being made like to, God. 

‘Os yap Adyou dvros Tov Yiod Tod Oeod cixwv ear 6 Huerepos Adyos, 
ovtws OvTOS av’Tod odias eikov radu éoriv H ev tiv yevopevyn copia: 
ev 7 70 cidévar Kal 76 ppoveiv éxovres, Sextixol ywopeba ris Snpsovpyou 
Sodias, kal 8 airs ywookew SuvdpeOa tov adrijs Tarépa: ‘“O yap 
éxwr’, pyot, ‘tov Yiov, éxer xai tov Ilarépa.’ xal, “6 dexdpevos pe, 

éxerat Tov amoorciAavrd pe. 

It will be observed that whilst it is unbefitting to God 
(daperés) that man should perish, it was an impossible idea 
(drorov jv) that he should be simply released, till the law was 
fulfilled. Why was this an impossible idea? The word 
“threat” (dreiAn) seems to suggest the thought that it was 
because God had once said that the sinner should die, and 
His word could not be stultified. This thought, which no 
doubt is true, even if it does not carry our understanding 
very far, is expressed clearly in the previous chapter. But 
something more is implied, though it is less clearly ex- 
pressed, in the disclaimer of the adequacy of penitence to 
compensate for sin, when sin has once for all spoiled the 
capacities of the nature. We might possibly have preferred 
a denial of the possibility of restorative penitence, under 
the condition of fallenness, to a denial of its adequacy—if 
only it had been possible; but in any case the passage, 
while formally emphasizing the necessity of God’s con- 
sistency, points really to an inherent, as opposed to an 
arbitrary, impossibility of any off-hand mode of human 
restoration. | 

“What then was to happen? or what ought God to have 
done? Toask of men a repentance which should match 
the transgression? This might be said perhaps to be 
worthy of God, that as transgression brought mankind to 
corruption, so repentance should bring them back to 
incorruptibleness. But neither could God accept repent- 
ance equitably (for He would not have been found true if 
man had not come into the power of death), nor is repent- 
ance a recovery from a tainted nature, it is only a surceasing 
from sin. Had there been but one act of discord, with no 
consequent corruption of nature, repentance might have been 
well enough. But if the direct result of the transgression 
was that man’s nature was corrupt and shorn of the grace 
which belongs to being in the image of God, what could still 
be done? Or what or who was required for the grace of 


1c, Ar, ii, 78, 








See a Ue 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 351 


such a recovery, save the Logos of God who Himself in 
the beginning made all things of nothing? Only He could 
bring the corrupt to incorruption again, and yet preserve 
the equity of the Father's government. Just because He 
was the Logos of the Father, and supreme over all, there- 
fore only He had power to renew His creation; only He 
sufficed to suffer on behalf of all, and to be the ambassador 
for all before the Father.” ! 

In chapter xx. death is spoken of as a necessity—a debt 
that was “due.” There is no attempt to analyze the 
necessity, or follow up, in any way, the metaphorical word 
“debt.” Neither is there any inquiry into the character of 
the death that is due, whether it is the actual death of the 
body, or a penal death of the soul, nor any comment upon 
the relation between these two.2 But the death which is 
owed is the death of all mankind: and therefore it is that 
He, who alone, as the author of being, could change 
corruptibleness into incorruption; He, who alone, as the 
very image of the Father, could restamp God’s image on 
man; He, who alone, as the very life (airofw4) could make 
dying man immortal; He, who alone, as the all ordering 
Logos and only begotten Son, could teach man the real 
service of the Father ; “ offered the sacrifice on behalf of all, 
giving up to death in the stead of all, that humanity which 


1 Tt oby et nal wept rodtov yevécOa } worjoa Toy Gedy 5 werdvoray em) Ty 
mapaBdoet Tovs &vOpdmrovs ararioca; Totro yap ty tis &kiov Phoeiev Beod, 
Aéywv, brs donep ex THs mwapaBdoews cis POopay yeydvacw, obtws ex Tis 
weravolas yévowro mdr bv els apOapclav. ‘AAA’ H pwetdvota ore Td evAoyov 
7) mpds Tov Ocdy epiaAartey (Eueve yap wdAwv ov GANOhs, wh Kparoupevwr ev 
Te Oavdtw Tav avOpdrwv)' odre 587] werdvoa ard Tov Kata PUow dvakadeiraL, 
&AAG wdvoy waver TOv Guaprnudrwv. Ei wey ody pdvoy hv wAnuméeAnua kal pH 
POopas erakorovOnots, KardGs dy hv 7H meTrdvora. Ei dé &wat wpodaBovons ris 
mapaBdoews, eis Thy Kata piow POopdy exparovvTo of kvPpwroi, Kal thy Tod 
kar’ eixdva xdpiv apapeOévres joav, Th tAAO ee yeveoOar ; 2 rlvos iv xpela 
mpos Thy To.avrTny xdpiy Kal avdnAnow, } Tod KaTd Thy dpxhy ex Tod wh dyTos 
memoinkdtos TX 8Aa Tod Ocod Adyou; Adtov yap hy wdAw Kal 7d POaprdy els 
apOapalay everynetv, kal 1d trip rdvtwy etrAoyov arocdout mpds Toy Marépa. 
Adyos yap @y Tod Tarpds kal brtp mdvras dy, axodovdws nad dvaxtion Td dra 
pévos jy duvards Kal trip mdytwy mabeiy Kal mpeoBedou wep) mdvtwrv ixavds 
mpos Tov Marépa. De Inc., vii. 

2 It may be said, however, in the light of the 27th chapter, that the death 
from which men are delivered neither is, nor is not, the natural death of the 
body, regarded szmplictter in itself. Rather it is the death of the body in 
respect of that character and meaning which it would have had if Christ had 
not died, The physical fact of death indeed remains, But its meaning is 
transformed. The horror is gone out of it. Death is now a weak thing. It 
is dead. ofrws aobevhs yéyove, ds Kal yuvatkas Tas GrarnOcloas Td mply rap 
abrovd, viv walCew abroy ds vexpdy nal mapeiuévoy. Death was once a fierce 
tyrant. But death was bound tight hand and foot, by the victory, through 
dying, of Christ ; and all now who in Christ pass through death can mock at 
his fears. ‘*O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory 2” 


352 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


was the shrine of Himself, that He might liberate all from 
the old transgression, and, proving Himself to be too strong 
even for death, might show, in the unscathed incurruptness 
of His own body, the first fruits of the resurrection of all.” + 

It will be observed that the thought of this passage 
emphatically recognizes two things. On the one side there 
is a perfectly unique possibility in the Son of God, of repre- 
senting all mankind, and dying as the representative of all; 
a possibility which, if it rests in one direction on the verity 
of His manhood, rests no less on His being the Logos who 
was with God, and was God,—the Life of Life, the Image 
of the Father, the Creator of all created being ; a possibility, 
therefore, which cannot even be conceived on any other 
side, or in any other person. And on the other hand, what- 
ever possible obscurity there may be about the precise 
analysis of such words as debt, or necessity, or death, it is 
perfectly clear that the purpose and the result of this 
sacrifice of Christ’s death, were to be, and were, the universal 
human conquest over death, in the universal emancipation 
of man from sin. This death meant a transformation of 
human liability, because of human character, far deeper and 
more real than could be expressed in any terms of a change 
of feeling on the side of God, a mere willingness to forego 
punishment, or pardon those who were not made capable 
of pardon. 

Why could not God redeem man by a word of command, 
in power? Simply because such a command-word would 
not have had the effect which was required. What was 
required was a change, not so much in the treatment of 
man, as in man’s deserving. It was not his freedom from 
punishment but his freedom from sin: it was not an 
external change but a change within himself, which was 
really to be brought about. God’s change in purpose, or 
remission of penalty, would simply have failed to do what 
needed to be done. 

“The equity of what was done may be recognised thus: 
if the curse had been removed by a word of power there 


1 “Ere:d) Sé Kal rd dperAduevoyv rapa wdvrwy Ede Aouwdv Grodo00jva’ aPpelAeto 
yap mdvras, &s mpoctrov, amobaveiv, 5” d pdAtora Kal éredhunoev* tovrov 
évexev werd Tas wep) Tijs OedryTOs ai’Tod ex TaY Epywy amrodelicis, Hin Aowwdy 
kal brtp rdvtwv Thy Ovolay avédeper, avT) mdvrwy Toy EavTod vady eis OdvaTov 
mapadidovs, va rods uev wmdvras dyurevOdvous kal €AevOepous Tis apxatas mapa- 
Bdocws worhon* delty St Eautdy Kal Savdrov Kpeirrova, arapxhy Tis TeV SAW 
dwartdcews 70 Wiov cGua UPOaproy éemidecevimevos. ... OSavdrov yap hy 
xpela, nal Odvaroy trip wdvrwy de: yevecdat, va Td rapa mavtwy dperAduevoy 
yévnta. De Inc. xx. 


Le eg a ee ee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 353 


would have been indeed a manifestation of the power of 
God’s word ; but man would only have been (as Adam was 
before the fall) a recipient from without, of grace which had 
no real place within his person; for this was how he stood 
in Paradise. Or rather he would have been worse off than 
this, inasmuch as he had already learned to disobey. It, 
under these conditions, he had again been persuaded by the 
serpent, God would have had again to undo the curse by a 
word of command; and so the need would have gone on 
for ever, and men would never have got away one whit 
from the liability of the service of sin; but for ever sinning 
they would for ever have needed to be pardoned, and would 
never have become really free, being flesh for ever them- 
selves, and for ever falling short of the law because of the 
weakness of the flesh.” 4 

What was really needed was that humanity itself, the 
humanity of all mankind, should again become divine, and 
capable of the holiness of God. Nor could anything short 
of the personal holiness of God in human nature effect this 
reunion of the human with the divine; and so really bring 
man back—not from the curse only, regarded as separable 
from sin, but from the curse which zs sin, and therefore is 
death, to the life which zs life. 

“ Again, if the Son had been a creature only, man would 
in no way have been rescued from death, not being united 
with God, For a creature cannot unite creatures with God, 
itself needing to be united; nor could a part of creation, 
itself needing to be saved, be the saving of creation. To 
avoid this He sent His own Son, who took created flesh, 
and became Son of Man; that, when all were within the 
danger of death, He, being other than all, Himself for all 
might offer His own body to death ; and thenceforth, since 
through Him all died, the word of the sentence on man 
might be fulfilled (for ‘in Christ all died’); and yet all 
might through Him be made free from sin and the curse 


1 TIAhy Kal 7d ebAovyor Tov yevouevou Oewpety ekeorw evredOev* el did 7d 
Suvaroy eiphker, kal €AdAvTO 7 KaTdpa, TOU pey KeAetoayTos 7 Sivas 
émedelxvuto, 6 wevTor &vOpwmros ToiovTos éylvero, olos Hy Kal 6 "Addu xpd Tis 
mapaBdoews, EwOev AaBwv Thy xdpw, Kal wh cuvnpLocperny exov airhy TH 
cdpats* TowvTos yap dy nal rére TEeOeito ev TH wapadelog Tdxa 5é Kal xelpwy 
éylvero, Sti kal mapaBatvei peudOnneyr. *Qy Tolvvv totodros, ef Kal mapa- 
mémeiaTto id Tov dpews, eylvero mddAw xpela mpoordia: rov Ocdy Kal Adoa 
Thy Katdpav’ Kat olrws els Umeipoy eylyero H xpela, Kal oddtv Frroy oi 
%vOpwror Euevov brevOvvoi, SovrAevoyres TH auapria’ aed 5 duaprdvortes, ded 
edéovTo Tov ovyxwpoiyTos, Kal ovdéroTe rXEevOepodyTO, odpKes SyTes Kad? 
éavTovs, kal del ATTduevar TH vouw Sid Thy doOeveray THs oapKds. c. Ar. 
ii, 68, 
! Z 


354 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


upon sin, and remain for ever truly alive from the dead and 
clothed in immortality and incorruption.”* 

“The Word became flesh that man might be capable of 
receiving God.”2 “ He was made human that we might be 
made divine.”? These are brief phrases which summarize 
the very essence of the thought. 

Had He been less than very God, or taken less than the 
very reality of man, this union, for which He was Incarnate, 
could never have been complete. 

“Never would man have been made divine by union 
with a creature, had the Son not been very God; never 
would man have stood at the Father’s right hand, had He 
who put on flesh not been, in essential nature, His very 
Logos. And just as we should not have been set free from 
sin and its curse, had it not been, in essential nature, human 
flesh which the Logos took (for we should have been un- 
touched by what was none of ours); so would man not 
have been made divine, had He who became flesh not been, 
by essential nature, from the Father—His own, and His 
very Logos. Therefore the union was on this wise—to 
make one the essentially human with Him who belonged 
to the essence of Deity, that so man’s salvation and deifica- 
tion might be sure.” 4 | 

What was needed then, was no plausible excuse for 
going back upon, nor artificial appearance of avoiding the 
necessity of going back upon, a word which had once been 
pledged. The question was not how man, though sinful, 


1 Tidaw re el xrloua jv 6 Tids, uevev 6 tvOpwros obdty Hrrov Ovnrds, wh 
cuvanrdéuevos TH OcG" ov yap nrlopa cuviwre Ta KTiopaTa TP Oc@, (nrody Kal 
abtd Toy cuvdwrovra® ovde Td épos THs KTloews owrTnpla Tis Kticews dy etm, 
Seduevov nal ait cwrnplas’ iva ody pundit rodTo yévnta, wéuwer Tov EavTod 
vibv,-xad ylverar vids avOpdrov, Thy KrioThy odpxa AaBdv ty’, eweidh wdyres 
eloly brevOuvot TS Oavdre, HAAos dv Tav TayTwy, a’Tds batp wavTay Td ior 
capa TE Oavdry mpocevéeyny, kal Aordy, ds wdyrwv BV abrod &wobavdyrwy, 6 
piv Adyos Tis dropacews mAnpwOF (‘adyTes yap drébavov ev Xpior@’)* wayres 
Bt 82 adbrod yévwyrat Aorwdy ercdOepor piv dard Tis Guaptlas Kat THs 8” adrhy 
Kardpas, GAnOads St Siayelywow eloae dvacrdyres ex vexpay, kal &0avaclay Kar 
upbapotay évdvoduevor. c. Ar. ii. 69. 
iy ‘O ere odpt éyévero, va toy &yOpwrov Sextuxdy OedtyTos woihoy. C. 

. ii, 59. 

8 Abros yap evnvOpdrncev, Wva juets coroinbGuev. De Inc. liv. 

4 Oix by 8& rdaAw eoroihOn xticuare cuvapbels 6 tvOpwros, el wh Ocds Fv 
&rAnbwds & Tids* nal ode by wapéorn Tw Tarp) 6 &vOpwros, ei wh Poe Kal 
dAnOwds Fv abrod Adyos 6 évdveduevos Td cGua. Kal domep ode by HArcvdepa- 
Onuev Grd Tis Gpaprlas Kal Tis Katdpas, ef uh pldoe capt hv dvOpwmlyn, hy 
evedbcato 6 Adyos’ (obdty yap Kowdy jv huiy mpds Td GAASTpLov’) obrws odn by 
ReoroihOn 6 SvOpwmos, ei wh Pio ex Tod Tlatpds nal GAnOiwds kal Tis avrov 
hv 5 Aéyos, 6 yevduevos odpt. Ata todto yap roiattn yéeyovey 7 ovvady, iva 
T@ kara hiow Tis Oedrnros cuvaln Tv pice EvOpwror, Kal BeBala yevnrat 7h 
cwrnpla Kal 7 Geomolnots av’rov., c. Ar, ii. 70. 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 355 


might be treated, but how he could be brought out of being 
sinful. And Athanasius clearly feels that death is so in- 
herently inseparable from sin, that the sinful cannot become 
sinless except through a process of dying. It was the 
reality of the human nature of the Logos, or (on the other 
side) it was the reality of the indwelling of the Logos in 
human nature, which constituted the possibility in and for 
human nature, of so dying as really to conquer, and recover 
from, sin. So much as this seems clearly to be insisted 
upon by Athanasius, even though he makes no attempt to 
analyze what it was in this unique, and uniquely possible, 
dying which constituted the conquest over, and recovery 
from, sin. That process of dying, which alone could 
eliminate sin, would itself have been impossible—it would 
have involved utter destruction—to anything less than the 
very Life of God; but when it was by the inherent Life of 
God, in the Person of Christ, outlived and overborne, the 
fact of having lived through the passage and process of 
dying became the capacity, in all humanity, of the life ot 
the holiness of God. 

“For the Logos, when He saw that there could be no 
escape for men from destruction without actually dying ; 
yet the Logos, being the Son of the Father and incapable 
of death, could not die; He therefore took to Himself a 
body which could die; that this, being the body of the 
Logos who is over all, might satisfy death for all, and yet 
by virtue of the indwelling Logos might remain itself im- 
perishable, and so destruction might be averted from all by 
the grace of the resurrection. Thus it is that, offering to 
death the body which He had taken to be His own, asa 
sacrificial victim without flaw or stain, He abolished death 
at a stroke from his fellowmen by the offering of that which 
stood for all. For being, over all, the Logos of God, when 
He offered, as a substitute for all, that body which was the 
very shrine of Himself, He justly fulfilled all that was owing 
in death. And so the imperishable Son of God, being one 
in mortal nature with all, justly clothed all with immortality, 
in the proclamation of the resurrection. For the destruction 
which belongs to death has now no more place against 
men, because of the Logos who indwells, through the one 
body, in them.” 4 


1 Sumdav yap 5 Adyos, Sti GAAwS od bv Avodeln Trav avOpdmrwyv 4h POopd, ei 
Bh 51a Tod rdytws &robaveiv, ody ody Te St Hv Toy Adyov awobaveiy 4bdvaroy 
bvra Kal Tov Marpds Tidy, rovrou Evexev rd durduevov arobaveiv éavTg AauBdves 
cua, Iva ToT Tov ém) wdvTwy Adyou petadraBdy, avr) wdvtwv ixavoy yévntas 


356 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Here such phrases as His death sufficing in the stead 
of all (dvri dévtwv) or being the offering of an equivalent 
(rq mpoopop§ tod KataAdyAov), which obviously express truth 
up to a certain point, are in no way pressed out of their 
proportion. Their suggestive metaphorical language is 
not allowed to be pushed (as in later thought it so often 
came to be) to the distortion, or exclusion, of the central 
thought. His death is not a mere alien thing of value, 
an ‘equivalent’ substituted for the death of men. But 
it is, potentially at least, the death of all men: for in Him 
all died. The very next sentence goes on to emphasize 
this thought by the illustration of a king who is said to 
live in a great city, because he lives in a single house within 
it; an illustration which, whatever may be thought of it 
as an illustration, plainly marks a serious attempt to 
explain how God Incarnate was in all men, not only 
in one. 

But this thought is very far from depending upon a 
single imperfect illustration. There is nothing which is 
more central to the teaching of Athanasius upon the whole 
\ subject. His death, His resurrection, His exaltation, His 
consecration, whatsoever He is said to have received—all 
were corporate and representative, not individual or 
(separate. These things only happened to Him that, in 

im, they might be true of us. It was not He, it was 
we, who needed these things, For us they happened to 
Him. They are ultimately ours even more than they 
are His. Whatever His death really signified or effected 
(which is the point least analyzed by Athanasius), His 
death was our death, as truly as the correlative resurrection 
is our resurrection. 

“ Since then—Himself deathless, as the Image of the 
Father—the Logos took the form of a servant, and in 
His own flesh as man underwent death on our account, 
that through death He might present Himself to the 
Father for us: therefore on our account, and for 
our sakes, He is also said to be ‘highly exalted’ as 
Tt Oavdr@, kal 51a Tov evoikhoavta Adyov &POaprov Siapnelvy, nat Aowwdy dad 
wévrov ) pops mabanra: TH THs dvacrdoews xdpiTe’ BOev as iepetov kal Oidpa 
mwavros édevOepoy omlaou, d aitds éaut@ ZraBe oGua mpoodywy els Odvatov, ard 
mdvrwv ev0ds trav Suolwy Hddite Toy Odvaroy TH mporpopa Tod KaTaAAhAov. 
‘Yrtp xdytas yap dv 6 Adyos Tov Ocod, elxdrws Toy EavTod vadv Kal Td gwuaTiKdy 
Bpyavov mpocdywv avtipuxov itp mdvrwy, émAhpov 7rd dherdduevoy ev te 
Gavdtw’ Kal otrws cuvdv dia Tod duolov Trois macw 6 &POapros Tod Oeod Tids 
eixdrws Tods wdvtas evéducey adbapalay ev TH wep) Tis dvarrdoews emayyenia. 
Kal abrh yap 7 év 7G Oavdr@ Popa Kara tay dvOpdmwy obKéTt xdpay Exer did 
Tov évoixnoavta Adyoy év rovTats 51a Tod Evds o@patos. De Inc. ix, 


7 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 357 


man; that as by His death we, in Christ, all died, so 
we should also in Christ be highly exalted, rising from 
the dead, and entering into the heavens ‘whither as a 
forerunner Jesus entered for us,’ etc. [Heb. vi. 20].... 
But if at this time, for our sakes, Christ entered into the 
very heaven, who Himself was before, and for ever, Lord 
and Maker of the heavens, it follows that it is for us that 
He is described as ‘exalted’ now. And just as when 
He sanctifies all, He says to the Father that He ‘ sanctifies 
Himself for our sakés, not that the Logos may be 
sanctified, but that He may in Himself sanctify us; so 
is the ‘highly exalted Him’ of this present passage, not 
that He may Himself be exalted highly—for He is the 
Highest—but that He for our sakes may be made 
righteousness, and we in Him be exalted, and come into 
the gates of the heavens.... So again it was not to 
Him that the gates were shut, who was Lord and Creator 
of all, but this too was written for us,on whom the door 
of Paradise was shut.... It was this exaltation in 
relation to ws which the Spirit foretold in the 88th Psalm: 
‘In Thy righteousness shall they be exalted, for Thou 
art the glory of their strength’ [Ps. lxxxix. 17-18]. But 
if the Son is righteousness, it follows that it is not He 
who is exalted, as if He lacked anything, but it is we 
who are exalted in the righteousness which He is.”?} 

Christ is corporately and inclusively man, just as Adam 
was corporately and inclusively man: only the method of 
the corporate relation is different, and its effect is opposite. 


1 Ene) obv eixdy dv rod Marpds nad &Odvaros dv 5 Adyos ‘ ZAaBe thy Tod 
SovAov pmopphy,’ nal dréueve 5 Huds ds vOpwros év tH EavTod capK Tdv 
Odvarov, ty ottws éautdy irtp judy 5:2 Tod Oavdrov mpocevéynn TH Marpl* 
51 rovTo kat ds uvOpwros 5” has nal drip judy Aéyerar bwepvpodcba, ty’ 
domep TO Oavdty aitod xdvtes Huets amePdvouev ev XpictG, obtws év aith TE 
Xpiot@ weaw hueis drepupwldper, Ex Te rdv vexpav eyerpduevot, kal els odpayods 

vepxduevot, ‘€vOa rpddpomos drép hua é:oHjAGev Inoovs,’K.T.A. «+ « Eide viv 
irtp judy els abrdy Toy odpaydy eiojAPev 56 Xpiords, xalror xa rpd rodrov Kai 
del Kipios dy kal Snutovpyds tay ovpavay, trip judy Hpa Kal 7d dWwOvat vov 
yéypamta. Kal domep aitds mdvras ayid wy Aéyer wdaw TH Tarp) ‘ éavrdy 
brép juav ayid lew,’ ovx Wa ayios 6 Adyos yévntat, GAN iva aitds ev EavT@ 
ayidon mdvras Huads* otrws tipa kal rd viv Aeyduevoy ‘ dweptwoev adrdy, odx 
ta ards bWwOG* thioros ydp éotw"* GAN Wa airs uty bwrep Huady ‘ dixasociyvy 
yevnta, mets 5t iwlduer ev abt, Kal els tas miAas eicéAPwuev TaY 
ovpavay. ... Kal ade yap obk abt@ jioay ai miAat Knexrciouévar Kuplw nat 
month tTav wdytwv byTt, GAAG 80 Huds Kal TodTO yéypamTal, ofs hv 7H Otpa 
KEekAEcopevn TOU wapadctoov. . . . Thy dt Totabrny eis Huds yevouévny tbwouw 
mpoavepaver TO mvetua ev dySonxooT@ Oyddw Waru@ Aédyor' ‘Kal év 77H 
Sicaootyyn gov tpwlhoovra, bret Td kabynua THis duvduews aitay ef ot.’ ELS 
Sucatootvn early 6 Tids, odin kpa adtés dor, ds évdehs, bWobuevos, GAA’ Hucis 
weper of ev TH Sixaortvy bWovmevor, Aris Cotw ards. c. Ar. i, 41. 


358 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


“No longer, according to our old birth-nature, do we 
die in Adam; but now that our birth-nature with all its 
weaknesses is transferred to the Logos, we are raised above 
earth, because the curse for sin is done away by reason 
of His presence in us who for us was made a curse. And 
justly so. For as, being all of earth, we die in Adam, so, 
being born again of water and spirit, are we all in Christ 
made alive, the flesh being no longer a thing of earth, 
but made to be ‘logos’ from henceforth, by reason of the 
Logos of God, who for our sakes became flesh.” + 

We are not, then, simply ourselves but He is in us; 
and we are what we are by virtue of Him who is in us. 
It is not He, simply, Himself, but He in us, who receives, 
and is blessed with, the blessings and gifts which are said 
to be poured on Him. 

“When it is said ‘Power was given unto me’ and ‘I 
received, and ‘for this cause God highly exalted Him, 
these are gifts from God given to us through Him. For 
the Logos never was, nor was made to be, lacking in them ; 
nor on the other hand were men capable of providing 
them for themselves; but they are given, through the 
Logos, to us. So then, as given to Him they are com- 
municated to us; for it was just for this that He became 
man, that, as given to Him, they might pass over to us, 
For as mere man could not have won these things, so He 
who was Logos only could not have lacked them. And 
so the Logos was united with us, and then communicated 
to us His power, and exalted us on high. For the Logos, 
being in man, highly exalted man ; and because the Logos 
was in man, it was man who ‘received.’ Since then it 
was because the Logos was in flesh that man was exalted, 
and received power, therefore it is to the Logos that these 
things are referred, since on His account they were given ; 
for it is on account of the Logos in man that these gifts 
were given. And just as ‘the Logos became flesh,’ so man 
received the things which came through the Logos, For 
whatever man received, the Logos is said to have received, 
that it might be shown that when man was unworthy to 


1 Oixéri yap, kata thy mpotépay yéveow, ev TS’Addu GroOvhoKomer® GAAS 
Aordy THs yeverews Tuay kal rdons THs capKiKhs aoGevelas wetareOevtwy els 
tov Adyor, évyeipducda amd vis, AvOclons tis 5 Guaptiay Kardpas did Toy ev 
huiv Sdiwtp jay yevduevoy nardpay” al elxdrws ye. “Qowep yap, ex vis 
bvres wmdvres, ev TS "Addu aroOvheKouer, oftws ‘ tvwOeviet HSaros Kal rvedparos 
dvaryevynbévtes,’ ev TH XpiorG wavres Cwororotpeba, ovnérs ds ynivns, GAAG 
Aorrby Aoywbelons Tis gapkds 31a tdv Tov Bcod Adyoy, ds 3 juas ‘éeyévero 
odpt.’ c Ar, iii. 33. 


ee 


Sel oe 


} 
4 
- 
; 
b 
J 
: 








ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 359 


receive it, so far as his own nature went, he received it 
nevertheless on account of the Logos made flesh... 
Since, then, through the union of the Logos with man, 
the Father, looking upon the Logos, bestowed upon man 
exaltation, possession of all power, and so forth; therefore 
to the Logos Himself are there referred, and as it were 
given to Him, all the things which through Him we 
receive. For as on our account He became man, so on 
His account are we exalted. Nor is it strange if just as 
on our account He humbled Himself, so on our account 
He is said to have been exalted. He bestowed the gifts, 
then, ‘upon Him’ for ‘us on account of Him’; and ‘ highly 
exalted Him’ for ‘us in Him.’ And so too, the Logos 
Himself, when we are exalted, and receive, and are 
succoured, gives thanks to the Father, as Himself exalted, 
and receiving, and succoured ; transferring our conditions 
to Himself, and saying, ‘all things which Thou hast given 
unto Me, I have given unto them.’”? 

In this last passage, the clearness and the emphasis are 
most remarkable, with which he not only lays down the 
immanence of the Logos in ourselves as a doctrinal truth 
more or less mysterious and remote, but finds in it the 
whole of human capacity to Godward; and finds at the 
same time, in that capacitating, the very purpose and 
significance of Incarnation. 

1 *Oray 5¢ (Aéynrat) Sti ‘’E5d0n poe ekovola’ Kad ‘ ZrAaBor,’ Kat ‘dia Todo 
breptwoev abroy 6 eds,’ Ta mapa Tov @cod eis Huds Core xaplouata 8 
ab’rod biddueva. Ov yap 6 Adyos évdehs hv } yéyove whore’ odd wdrAw 
of &vOpwra ixavol joay Eavtots diaxovijica Tavra” dia 5& Tod Adyou dldora 
juiv® 3ia TodTO, &s aiT@ Sddueva, july petadldora’ 31a rodTo yap Kal évnvy- 
Opdrnoer, Wa, ds adTG diddueva, cis Huds diaBH. “AvOpwmos yap WiAds odK dy 
HkidOn Tovtwy. Adyos 5¢ wddAw wdvos od by CdehOn TobTwy. ZuvhPOn ovv 
hiv 6 Adyos, nal rére eZovolay juiv perédwxe, nal dreptWwoev. Ev avOpdrp 
yap dv o Adyos breptbwoe tov vOpwrov’ Kal ev dvOpdrw dvTos TOD Adyou, 
traBev 6 tvOpwwos. "Eme) ovv tod Adyou dvTos év cap) id0n 6 kvOpwros, kal 
fraBev etovalay, da rovro els thy Adyor dvapepera tadra, émeidh 3V abrdy 
€560n* 51d yap Tov ev dvOpdarw Adyov €560n Taira Ta xaplopata. Kal domep 
*6 Adyos odpt éyéveT0,’ obtw kal 6 &vOpwros Td did Tod Adyou efAnde. Tdvra 
yap b0a 5 tvOpwros elandher, 5 Adyos A€yerat elAnpéva® Wa derxOf, Bri odK 
Bktos dy 5 UvOpwros Aafeiv, door Frey els Thy aitod Pic, Suws dia Td yevd- 
pevoy aodpxa Adyov elanpev.... «++. "Emeid) ody, aovvadiévros rot 
Adyou T@ avOpémrg, els Toy Adyoy dmoBrérwv exapl(ero 6 Marhp re avOpéry 
Td ipwOva, Td Exew wacay etovotay, cal boa To.atTa’® 31a TodTO a’T@e TG Adyw 
mdvra avapépetat, kal ds abt@ didduevd éotrw & 5V adrod jets AauBdvouer. 
‘Qs yap 50 Huds evnvOpdmrncer adtds, obrws jucis 50 adrdy SWovmeba. Ovdty ovy 
&romov ci, domep dt’ quads eramelywoev Eavroy, Kal 50 jas Aéyerat dwepvpao Ga. 
*’Exaploaro’ oty ‘abr@’ avtt rod ‘jyiv 8 abrov,’ nal ‘ dweptWwoer’ avr) Tod 
‘has év adt@.’ Kal abrds 5 5 Adyos, juay tWoupévwy, kal AauBavdvrov, 
Kat Bondovuévwy, ws aitds sWodmevos, wat AauBdywv, Kal BonJoduevos, 
edyapiore? TH TMarpl, ra quérepa els Eautdy dvapépwy nal Aéyww ‘ adyTa boa 
Sédwads por, SédwKa avrots. c. Ar, iv. 6, 7. 


360 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


He is not afraid to say it very strongly. We ourselves 
_as Christians, are now made ‘sons of God’: within us the 
presence of the Lord is seen and is worshipped: those who 
look upon ws, see and testify that of a truth God is in us. 
And how is He in us? What is the method, and what is 
the proof of His Presence? There was only one thing 
more waiting to be said: and this too, Athanasius has 
said with clearness. The presence of the Lord within 
ourselves is the presence of His Spirit, which He gave us. 
He clothed Himself with the flesh which was subjected 
to sin, and, for sin, died, that He Himself might be, as 
Spirit, within us; and we, characterized by His Spirit, and 
so informed by Himself, might be raised to the height 
in Him. 

“ But in that the Lord, even when He was in the body, 
and known as Jesus, was worshipped, and believed to be 
Son of God, and through Him the Father was known, it 
would seem to be plain that it was not the Logos as Logos 
who received this grace but ourselves. For by reason of 
our kinship of nature with His Body, we ourselves also are 
become a temple of God, and have been made from hence- 
forth sons of God; so that in us too now the Lord is 
worshipped, and those who see us proclaim, as the apostle 
said, that ‘God is in them of a truth’: as John also says in 
the Gospel ‘as many as received Him, to them gave He 
power to become children of God, and in the epistle he 
writes: ‘By this we know that He abideth in us, by His 
Spirit which He hath given us.’ And this is a token of 
the goodness which is to usward from Him, that we were 
exalted because the Lord most High was in us; while the 
Saviour humbled Himself in the taking of our humble body, 
and took the form of a servant, in putting on the flesh which 
was servant to sin.” + 


1T 5¢ nad év oduart yevduevoy tov Kipiov Kal KrAnbévta *Inoody mpoo- 
KuvetoOat, mioreverOal Te avtoy Tidy cod, Kal 5: adrod emipwooKnerOu Tov 
Tlarépa, djAov dy ely, nabdwep elpnrat, Sri ovx 6 Adyos, 4 Adyos éorly, ZAaBe 
Thy TodutTny xdpw, GAN Hucis. Aid yap Thy mps 7d cGua abrod cvyyeveav 
vads @cod yeydvauey kal juets, kad viol @cod Aorwdy wemworhucba, Sore nad ev 
hui dn mpockvvetoOa toy Kipiov, nal rods dpavras ‘amayyéArew’ as 6 
"Andatoados elpnner, ‘ rt bvtws 6 Ocds ev Todbrois eatt” Kaldwep Kad 6 Iwdyvns 
év wey TE ebayyerle gnaty* ‘bro Bt EraBov abrody, Z5wkev adrots etovolay réxva 
Ocod yeverOa” ev 8¢ tH 'Emioroah ypdde’ ‘Ev roir yweoKxomev Srt péver 
ev jyuiv, ee Tov Uvetuaros abrod ov tdwkey quiv.’ Tydpiopa dé éort nal rodro 
Tis els Huds wap’ abrov yevoueyns ayadrnros, Ste Hucts pev bpdOnuev, ia 7d 
év juiv elvar tov thhiorov Kipiov’ . . . avtds 5¢ 6 Swrhp éraméwwoev Eavrdv ev 
<® daBeiv Td tarewdy judy cpa, Sobdrov re popphy CraBev, evdvoduevos Thr 
dovaAwleioay odpka tH Guaptia. c. Ar, i. 43. 


ee ee ee a. 5 ee ee 


SSRR EE 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 361 


Not for Himself but for us, was He, as man, endowed 
with the Holy Spirit. Ours really is the anointing. We 
are His Christs. And He was Christ for this. This is 
the consummation of His Presence in us—that Presence 
of Christ’s Spirit, characterizing us, which transfigures us 
from sin. 

“But if it is for our good that He sanctifies Himself, 
and this He does after becoming man, it is very plain 
that the descent of the Spirit also, which came on Him 
in Jordan, came really on ws, because He put on our body. 
It came not for the advancement of the Logos, but for 
our sanctifying, that we might share His ‘Chrism,’ and it 
might be said of us ‘Know ye not that ye are a temple of 
God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’ For when 
the Lord, as man, was washed in Jordan, it was we who 
were being washed in Him and by Him. And when He 
received the Spirit, it was we who were being made by 
Him capable of receiving it.” 

So He was anointed, not with the Old Testament oil, 
but above all His fellows, with “the oil of gladness,” 
“which He Himself, through the prophet, interprets of 
the Spirit: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
He hath anointed me’; and the Apostle said also, ‘How 
God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit’ Of what time 
is it that this is said of Him, but the time when, being in 
flesh, He was baptized in Jordan, and the Spirit descended 
on Him? And the Lord Himself says to His disciples, 
the Spirit ‘shall take of mine,’ and ‘I will send Him,’ and 
‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’ Yet He who, as the ‘Logos’ 
and ‘the brightness of the Father’ imparts the Spirit to 
others, is now said to ‘be sanctified, because He has 
become man, and the body that is sanctified is His own. 
From that time therefore it was that we first began to re- 
ceive the Chrism-unction and the Seal, as John says, ‘Ye 
have a chrism from the Holy one’; and the apostle, ‘and 
ye were sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.’ What is said 
therefore is on our account and for our good.... If He 
is God, and the throne of His kingdom is for ever and 
ever, how could God be advanced? or what did He lack 
who was sitting on the throne of the Father? But it, as 
the Lord Himself said, the Spirit is His, and taketh of 
His, and He Himself sendeth Him, it follows that it is 
not the Logos, as He is Logos and Wisdom, who is 
anointed with the Spirit who is given by Him, but it is the 
flesh, which was assumed by Him, which really isin Him 


362 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


and by Him anointed ; that the sanctification which came 
on the Lord as man, might come on all men from Him,” ? 

So again: “It is not then the Logos, as Logos, who 
receives advancement— for all things have been His 
and are His for ever ;—but it is men who first begin to 
receive in Him and from Him. For when He is at this 
time said to be anointed as man, it is we in Him who are 
anointed, just as when He is baptized, it is we who are 
baptized in Him. ... For He did not say, ‘ for this cause 
He anointed thee that Thou shouldest become God, or 
King, or Son, or Logos ’—for all this He was and is for ever, 
as has been shewn; but rather, ‘because Thou art God 
and King, therefore art Thou anointed Christ, since none 
other could unite man with the Holy Spirit but Thou, the 
Image of the Father, after whom we were created from 
the beginning; for Thine is the Spirit also. For no created 
nature could be adequate for this, since angels transgressed 
and man had disobeyed. Therefore was God required— 
and the Logos zs God—to deliver by Himself those who 
were underneath the curse.” ? 

The Spirit is not the Spirit of another, but the Spirit 


1 El 8¢ quay xdpw éavtdy ayider, nal TodTo rose? Ste yeyovey kvOpwros, 
- eBSnAov, rt Kad 4 els abrdyv ev TH “Lopddvy Tod Mveduaros yevouevn nabodos, els 
huas hv ywoudvn, 512 7d popety airdy rd tuerepoy oaua. Kal od« én 
Beariéoe: Tod Adyou yéyover, GAA’ els Huay rdaAw ayiacpdy, a Tod xploparos 
a’rod perardBwpuev, cal wep) Huav AexOeln, ‘odx oldare Sri vads Oeod eore, 
Kal 7d Ilvedua Tod @cod olxel ev duty ; Tod yap Kuplov, as dvOpdmov, Aovowevov 
els roy lopddyny, fueis quer of ev ad’r@ cal wap abrod Aovduevor. Kal dexouevov 
5¢ abrod 7d Mvedua, qucis Huey of wap aitrod ywduevoe rovTov Sexrimol. Ard 
TovTo ovd’ Samep "Aapoy, } AaBid, } of &AAoL wdyTes, obrws Kal adrds éAalw 
Kéxpiorat, GAAG BAAws wapda wdyTas To’s pweTéxovs aiTov, eral@ ayarArdoews* 
brep Epunvedwv aitds elvat Td Tvedua, 51a Tod mpophrov Pyol, ‘Tvedua xvplov 
ex éue, ob elvexey Expicé we” Kad&s xa 6 Amdarodos elpnner, ‘ ‘Qs Expiocev 
abroy 6 @eds rvebuari Gyiv. dre oby kal ravra wep) adrod elpnra, 4 dre Kal 
év capki yevduevos éBawti{ero ev TH “lopddvyn, kal ‘ xaraBéBnker ex’ abrdy rd 
Tivedua’; Kal why abrds 6 Kipids pnor 7d TMvedua ‘ex rod eéuod AfWerat,’ nab 
“Eyd at’td admooréAdAw*’ wal ‘AdBere Tvetua dyiov’ rots pabnrais. Kal 
Suws 6 GAdAows mwapéxwv ws ‘Adyos cal arabyacua Tod Tlarpbs’ Aéyetat viv 
‘ayidCecOat,’ ererd) wédAw yéyover tvOpwros, nal Td ayaCduevov cGma abtod 
éori. "EE éxelvov yoov kal juets nptducOa rod Td xploua Kal Thy oppayida 
AauBdvew, Aéyovros ToD pév “Iwdvyov, ‘Kal buets xploua exere Gd Tod 
irylov.? rov 8& ’AwoordaAov, ‘Kal suets eodpayloOnre rH Tyvedpate ris 
erayyerlas T@ Gyly.’ Odxody 37 huds nal bwép hua@y éore 7d Aeydmevor. 
Tlota rotyuy nat éx robrov mpoxomh BeATidcews xal ‘usiobds aperis’  amwdAds 
mpdtews tov Kuplov SeixvuTa;... - +... ef dt, Kal ds abrds 6 Kupios 
elpneevy, avrov éort 1rd Tlvetua, ex Tod airod AauBdver, ards re avd 
amooréAAe, ovn tpa 5 Adyos éorly, 7) Adyos tor) Kal Sodla, 6 7G wap’ abrod 
5Souéve Tvetpars xpiduevos, GAA’ Hh mpocAnPcion wap abtot odpt éorw 7 ev 
a’T@ kal rap avrod xpiouévn® twa nal db ayiacpuds, as els tvOpwroy Toy Kipioy 
ywipevos, els xdvras avOparous yévntat map avrov. c. Ar. i. 47. 

2 Oix tpa 6 Adyos early, 4 Adyos éorly, 6 BeAtiotmevos* elxe yap wdvra kar 
Gel Exec GAD’ of SvOpwrol ciow, of apxhv ExovTes Ted AauBdvew ev aiT@ car 


Pe Sit gn", 


We i 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 363 


of Himself, who has in Him become, through His In- 
carnation, the Spirit of Man. 

“But through whom, or by whom, should the Spirit be 
given but through the Son, whose the Spirit also is? and 
when could we possibly receive Him, save when the Logos 
became man?.... For since the flesh that was in Him 
was sanctified first; and He because of it was said to 
have ‘received’ as man, it is upon us, who receive of 
His fulness, that the resultant grace of the Spirit dwells.” + 

It was thus that death was conquered in man, because 
man was really separated from sin: and thus that the 
law, powerless in the form of command to man as he 
naturally is, was merged in the power of grace to those 
who, made capable now of receiving the Logos, realize, 
in the Spirit, their lives and themselves. 

“For in this too the ministration which is through Him 
is better, in that ‘what the law could not do in that it was 
weak through the flesh,God sending His own Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the 
flesh, taking away from it its fallenness, in which it was 
held captive continually, so that it could not receive the 
mind of God. But in that He made flesh capable of 
receiving the Logos, He made us to walk no longer after 
flesh but after spirit, and to say, again and again, ‘we are 
not in flesh but in spirit, and that ‘the Son of God came 
into the world not to condemn the world but’ to deliver 
all men, and ‘that the world through Him might be saved.’ 
For then, as having to answer for its deeds, the world was 
judged under the law; but now the Logos has received the 
judgment into Himself, and suffering in the body for all, 
has conferred salvation upon all. This John saw and cried, 


30 abrod. Adbrod yap viv Acyouevov avOpwrivws xplerOa, Tyuets eopev of ev 
ait@ xpiduevac’ ereidh nal BamriCouevov airod, jucis eouev of ev aire 
Bawri(duevor* ... « » ~ » od yap elme ‘Aid TodTO Expicé ce Iva yévn Oeds, 
 Bacireds, 2} Tids, 2 Adyos” Fv yap nal wpd Tobrov Kai Zorw del, nabdwep 
5éSeimrat* GAAG pGAAov, ‘Ewe:d) Oeds ef wal Bacireds, 51a TodTo Kal éexploOns * 
exe) obde HAAOv Fv ovvda toy uvOpwrov TH Mvedpart TH ‘Aylw, 7} cod Tis 
eixdvos tod Tarpds, nab? hy nal e& dpyiis yeydvamer. Zod ydp core wad rd 
Tiveoua.’ Tay yi yap yerntay h ptos od Fy akidmiotos els TotTO, &y-yeAwy 
bevy wapaBdyvrwy, avOpdrwy 8 wapaxovodyvtwy. Aid Todto @cod xpela ty 
(‘@eds 3¢ eorw 5 Adyos*’) tva rods bird thy Katdpay yevoudvovs adds 
€Aevdepmon. c. Ar. i, 48, 49. 

1 Aid tlyos 3¢ wal mapa tlvos er 7d Mvedua dtdo0c0u H 51d Tod Tiod, ob Kar 
7d Tvedud éort; more 5¢ AapBdvew juets eduvdueOa, ef wh Bre 5 Adyos 
yéyovey tvOpwros;.... «+.» THS yap ev a’T@ caps mporys ayiac- 
Oclons, xa aro Aceyoucvov 3: aithy ciAndévat, ws dvOpamov, Hueis emrako- 
Aovdovoay exouey thy rod Tveduatos xdpiv, ee Tod wAnpdparos aitod 
AauBdvoytes. c. Ar. i, 50, 


364 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


‘the law was given through Moses, but the grace and the 
truth came through Jesus Christ. Better is the grace than 
the law, and the truth than the shadow.” ! 

Nothing, as it seems to me, can be more emphatic than 
is, to the thought of Athanasius, the conception of a vital 
regeneration of humanity in general; that is to say, 
potentially at least, of humanity as humanity. What, 
then, is the secret or method of this stupendous trans- 
formation? It is certainly no mere change in the attitude, 
which would be, in fact, a change in the character, of God. 
It is not that God—with colourable ground first provided 
or otherwise—consents to treat man inconsistently with 
man’s deserving or capacity. It is not in God at all, but 
in man, that the change is wrought: a divine change which 
actually produces a divine capacity (if we dare hardly say 
deserving) in man. It is certainly not, then, an act which 
properly affects one unit only in humanity: asif the Person 
of Christ were regarded artificially, as a substitute for man- 
kind. It is not an act external to humanity in general, 
like an act of mere purchase or barter. Still less is it a 
balancing of an abstract equation by infliction of a quantum 
of vengeance as counterpoise to a similar quantum of sin. 
Least of all is it the self-indulgence of anger by irrelevant 
outpouring of vindictiveness upon an extraneous and 
innocent victim. The phrase ‘vicarious punishment, if 
it is not at all points wholly irrelevant to the Athanasian 
language, or wholly unrelated to the truth, has, at best, a 
relevancy so faint that it can do much to mislead, and 
comparatively little to illuminate, the thought that is con- 
tent to be based upon it. 

What is it, then? It is a Divine act, profound and 
many-sided. It is an act of almost inconceivable con- 
descension, and goodness, and love. It is the self-identifica- 
tion of God with humanity ; one primary aspect of which 

1 Kal yap nal ard rodro xpelrrwy 8” adrod diaxovta yéyover, Sri Kat 
‘rd &ddvaroy Tod vduou, ev & hobéver did THs capKds, 6 @eds Toy EavTod Tidv 
méuas ev duotmuare capkds Guaprtas kad wep) Guaprlas Karéxpive Thy Gmaprlay 
ev tH cape’, exothoas an’ abtijs Td wapdrrwua, ev & diamavrds nxuadwriCero, 
ore ph SéxecOu tov Oeiov vodv. Thy 8& odpxa Sextikhy rod Adyou 
katacKkevdcas, emolnoey tuas ‘unkére kata odpea weprmareiv, GAAQ Kate 
mvedua,’ Kat moAAduis Aéyew * ‘“‘Hyeis dé ov Couey ev cape, &AA’ ev mvedpart” 
Kat “Ort 7AGev 6 Tod Ocod Tids ‘eis roy Kécpov, ovy va Kxplyn roy Kdcpor, 
GAA’ tva, wdvras AvTpdontat, Kal owOH 5 Kdcmos 8’ adrod.? Tdre pey yap, ds 
brevOuvos, 6 néopos explvero bd Tod vduov' Upr: 88 5 Adyos els Eavrdy 
ediaro +d xpiua, Kal To chpart maddy batp mdévtwy, owrnplay Trois maw 
éxaploaro. Todro dé BAérwy Kéxpayev Iwdvyns* ‘‘O vduos 81 Mwoéws 25600, 
h xdpis Kal 7 GARVea 51d "Inood Xpiorod eyévero.’ Kpelrrwy 58» xdpis HS 
vépuos, Kal 4} GAHVEa rapa thy oxidy., c. Ar. i, 60. 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 365 


is the willing surrender of humanity, in the Person of God, 
to that dying without which there can be no passage for 
the sinner to sinlessness; but to the very essence of which 
belong also the infusion, or reproduction, in humanity in 
general, of the living Spirit of the Divine Redeemer ; the 
realization, in humanity, of His very Spirit, which, alike in 
His self-sacrifice to purgatorial dying, and in His inherent 
and essential victory, is His sanctification through dying,— 
nay, His ‘ deification ’—of human character and life. 

It would seem to me idle to try to divide these things: 
to say that the doctrine of the immanence of Christ, as 
Spirit, in humanity is one thing, and that the Redemption 
of humanity by the sacrifice of Christ’s death is quite 
another; to say that the doctrine of the Spirit is true, and 
is a sequel to Redemption, but that it forms no part of the 
interpretation of Redemption itself; to say, in other words, 
that the doctrine of Redemption, or Atonement, either 
must be, or can be, completely interpreted by itself, apart 
from the separate doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Neither 
the thought of God, nor the thought of God’s redeeming 
work upon man, is thus divisible into sundered parts. 
God is one. And the drama of the Atonement, however 
complex or many-sided, is one. 

I cannot believe that the writer of the passages quoted 
above would have acquiesced in any real separation of 
these two aspects of the atoning purpose, or atoning effect, 
of the Incarnation of the Eternal Logos. But if so, I 
cannot but feel that the position of S. Athanasius as a 
whole is not really compatible with the technical inter- 
pretations of the doctrine of the Atonement which form 
so large a part, perhaps not of the living creed, but at least 
of the logical discussion, of later times. The fact that 
S. Athanasius did not write a formal treatise on the 
doctrine of Atonement is by no means necessarily a 
disadvantage to us. The different elements of his thought 
on the subject come out with sufficient clearness in his 
argumentative treatment of the Incarnation. Perhaps they 
come out the more freshly, and with all the fuller life, 
because they have not been too closely or formally swathed 
in the symmetry of a logic, which might possibly even in 
his case, as in the case of so many after him, have been 
too rigid to do full justice to them. 


For the purpose of vindicating the view of Atonement 
taken in this volume against the charge of novelty, or 


e 


366 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


(what is generally implied in novelty) undue contradiction 
against a real Christian consensus, this glance into the 
mind of the first four centuries, incomplete as it is, might 
probably suffice. 

And further, it seems reasonable to suggest that what 
plainly is true so far down in the history is true substantially 
very much further; and that things said in individual 
efforts, of exposition or of illustration, had not anything 
like the place in popular—any more than in authoritative 
—acceptance, which the modern world, looking backwards, 
has been inclined to suppose. The theories of Gregory of 
Nyssa, as of Origen in earlier times, were individual 
attempts at illustrative exposition, received in all pro- 
bability and regarded as such. If, in the absence of 
other and better illustrations they gradually influenced 
popular imagination almost as if they had been authori- 
tative; this was probably at most a very gradual and 
unconscious process. The intellect of the Church was not 
seriously at work upon the subject, and therefore never 
consciously reached, much less formulated, any conclusions 
which could for a moment claim to represent the real 
consensus or authority of the Church. Moreover, even 
where such theories were held, it is in the highest degree 
unlikely that they were held by those who adopted any 
more than by those who originated them, as an exhaustive 
statement of the truth. They are such forms of statement 
as would find place in the lecture room rather than in 
the oratory, in the speculation of a curious logic about 
religion, rather than in the religion of the heart. In 
devout Christian hearts, whose prayer was towards God, 
whose faith was in the Crucified, and who were led and 
moulded by the Spirit, such speculations never would 
displace an instinctive faith of larger and deeper import. 
Such a faith would always remain, however inconsistently, 
side by side with them and beneath them, more vital 
ultimately, and more real than they. 

No doubt, as the centuries passed on, artificial modes of 
thought about the rationale of atonement became, or 
seemed to become, more integrally a part of the thought 
of the Church; and no doubt the inconsistency between 
such modes of thought and the deeper instincts of 
devotion came more frequently, and more clearly, to the 
surface of Christian consciousness. The absence, for the 
first ten centuries, of any serious attempt to co-ordinate 
such difficulties, as a whole, is really a proof not only of 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 367 


the extent to which the Church was free from any authori- 
tative ruling, or even discussion, upon the question; but 
of the very gradual process by which Christian conscious- 
ness realized the hampering character of certain (more or 
less instinctive or familiar) modes of illustration of the 
doctrine; and therefore also of the very imperfect extent 
to which those modes of illustration had entered into, or 
in any way affected, the true heart of Christian worship or 
of Christian faith. . 

Still, there were the misconceptions. And they did by 
degrees grow, alike in their own definiteness of outline, and 
in a certain sort of prescriptive authority. And, so growing, 
they did become more and more consciously oppressive to 
worship and to faith. 


The Cur Deus Homo of S. Anselm, which must always 
be of importance as the first formal attempt to philosophize 
the whole subject, is animated (as is so often the case with 
the most constructive works of theology) by the desire to 
protest against misconceptions. And no doubt by the 
time of S. Anselm it required some measure alike of 
courage and of caution to stand openly against modes of 
thought which had become so far inveterate. Thus it is 
part of his caution or considerateness, that the objections 
which he plainly feels and wishes to satisfy are not urged 
by Anselm in his own name, but rather in that of his inter- 
locutor Boso, who speaks as quoting, with a quite undefined 
degree of sympathy, or at least of perplexity, the difficulties 
started by the ‘zzjfideles. It is, then, formally, the zxjfideles 
who cannot see how men were held in effective thrall; or how 
the kingdom of Satan or its subjects were outside the power 
of God; or how anything else was needed to set men free 
from punishment except the will of God; or what occasion 
there was for the Incarnation at all. With difficulties like 
these, which are partly Christian and partly anti-Christian, 
the argument as to the ‘justice’ of Satan’s dominion 
is skilfully combined, the whole being put as the difficulty 
which the orthodox champion is called upon to explain. 

“For under what tenure, or in what prison-house or in 
whose power were you detained, from which God could not 
have set you free, without redeeming you with such great 
effort, and at last with His own blood? ..... If you say 
that God had no power to do all this by His sole command, 
when you say that by a command He created all things, 


368 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


you are inconsistent with yourselves in denying His power. 
Or if you admit that He could have done it in this way, but 
would not; how can you shew Him to be wise while you 
assert that it was His will to suffer what so ill became 
Him? For everything which you have to suggest was in 
His will only; for the wrath of God means nothing but 
His will to punish. Therefore if He does not will to punish 
man’s sins, man is free from his sins, and from God’s wrath, 
and from hell, and from the devil’s power,—from all the 
things which he suffers by reason of sin; and all that 
he lost by the same reason of sin, he gets back again. 
For in whose power is either hell or the devil? or whose 
is the kingdom of heaven, but His who made all things 
that are? Every single thing which you either dread 
or desire, is subject to the irresistible power of His 
Wis ans 

“ And as to that other position which we are accustomed 
to take, that it was due from God to deal with the devil for 
the release of man by law rather than by force; so that 
when the devil slew Him in whom was no cause of death, 
and who was God, he justly lost the power which he held 
over sinners; but otherwise God would unjustly have done 
him violence, since he had a right to the possession of man, 
for he had not snatched him by force, but man had come to 
him of his own accord; I can not see any forceinit. Forif 
devil or man had belonged to himself, or to any other than 
God, or had been held within any power other than God’s, 
this might possibly be said; but since both devil and man 
belong only to God, and neither of them stands outside of 
God’s power, what legal dealing should God have with His 
own property, for His own property, within His own 
property, except to punish His own slave who had per- 
suaded his fellow slave to join him and run away from the 
master of them both; and so had been traitor enough to 
harbour the runaway, and thief enough to steal the thief, 
who belonged to his Lord? For thieves they were, both 
of them; since the one stole himself from his Lord, while 
the other was the instigator of the theft..... For how- 
ever justly man was tormented by the devil, yet the devil 
was unjust in tormenting him,.... Therefore there was 
no cause whatever in the devil why God should not deal 
with him by force for man’s deliverance.” } 

1 In qua namque, aiunt nobis, captione, aut in quo carcere, aut in cujus 


potestate tenebamini, unde vos Deus non potuit liberare, nisi vos tot laboribus 
et ad ultimum suo sanguine redimeret? . . . . Si dicitis quia Deus haec omnia 


getidl 


a a 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 369 


There is thus considerable skill in the way in which the 
question as a whole is introduced ; and the modifications of 
current language which Anselm meant to adopt are inter- 
woven with error which he meant to refute. The whole 
problem as stated is well worthy of the deepest thought 
and the most careful handling. Even to this day it would 
be no mean theological exercise to disentangle exactly, and 
to analyze, the fallacies and the truths which are woven 
together in these two chapters. 

Anselm’s constructive treatment, when we come to it, is 
a real contribution, no doubt, and yet it is to our eyes an 
obviously inadequate one. It has in part the character of a 
first attempt to philosophize completely. It is a starting 
point for much improvement upon itself, while its own in- 
adequacies become quickly apparent. 

It is indeed abundantly plain that S. Anselm’s theory 
never can have represented with any adequacy the whole 
of the living thought which tried to express itself in it. He 
is trying to give symmetrical expression, in terms of logic, 
to a faith which lies deeper than his essay towards a logical 
exposition of it. It would be impossible to suppose that 
any really devout spirit could have felt, in his worship of 
the atonement, no more than is contained in Anselm’s logic. 


facere non potuit solo jussu, quem cuncta jubendo creasse dicitis, repugnatis 
vobismetipsis quia impotentem illum facitis. Aut si fatemini, quia potuit, sed 
non voluit, nisi hoc modo ; quomodo sapientem illum ostendere potestis, quem 
sine ulla ratione tam indecentia velle pati asseritis? Omnia enim hec, quae 
obtenditis, in ejus voluntate consistunt ; ira namque Dei non est aliud quam 
voluntas puniendi. Si ergo non vult punire peccata hominum, liber est 
homo a peccatis, et ab ira Dei, et ab inferno, et a potestate diaboli, quz 
omnia propter peccata patitur; et recipit ea, quibus propter eadem peccata 
privatur. Nam in cujus potestate est infernus aut diabolus; aut cujus est 
regnum coelorum, nisi ejus, qui fecit omnia? Quzecunque itaque timetis aut 
desideratis, ejus voluntati subjacent, cui nihil resistere potest ... . Sed 
et illud, quod dicere solemus, Deum scilicet debuisse prius per justitiam, 
contra diabolum agere, ut liberaret hominem, quam per fortitudinem, ut cum 
diabolus eum, in quo nulla mortis erat causa, et qui Deus erat, occideret, 
juste potestatem, quam super peccatores habebat, amitteret ; alioquin injustam 
violentiam fecisset illi, quoniam juste possidebat hominem, quem non 9 
violenter attraxerat, sed idem homo se sponte ad illum contulerat : non video 
quam vim habeat. Nam sidiabolus aut homo suus esset, aut alterius quam Dei, 
aut in alia quam in Dei potestate maneret, forsitan hoc recte diceretur ; cum 
autem diabolus aut homo non sit nisi Dei, et extra potestatem Dei neuter 
consistat; quam causam debuit Deus agere, cum suo, de suo, in suo, 
nisi ut servum suum puniret, qui suo conservo communem dominum deserere 
et ad se persuasisset transire, ac traditor fugitivum, fur furem, cum furto domini 
sui suscepisset ? Uterque namque fur erat, cum alter, altero persuadente, seipsum 
domino suo furabatur. . . . Quamvis enim homo juste a diabolo torqueretur, 
ipse tamen illum injuste torquebat. . . . Nihil igitur erat in diabolo, cur Deus 
contra illum ad liberandum hominem sua uti fortitudine non deberet, Ch, 
vi. and vii. 
2A 


370 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Of this, indeed, Anselm is abundantly conscious. He is 
constantly referring to the ‘altiores rei rationes’ which his 
expression cannot reach. One such phrase was quoted in 
the preface to these pages. Another very striking one is 
in the 16th chapter of the 2nd part. Another is near the 
end of the 19th chapter: “ Puto me aliquantulum jam tuae 
satisfecisse quzestioni, quamvis hoc melior me facere plenius 
possit, et majores atque plures quam meum aut mortale 
ingenium comprehendere valeat hujus rei sint rationes.” He 
is, of course, not wrong in attempting to rationalize what 
he knows that he can at best rationalize very incompletely. 
And his treatise has helped us all; though in part by 
helping us to see the inadequacy of some prima facie 
modes of interpreting certain realities of our own conscious- 
ness, which lie, in fact, deeper than our interpreting power. 
But it follows from this that we are able to criticize Anselm’s 
theory with the utmost freedom, without even imagining for 
a moment that we are criticizing the heart of Anselm’s faith. 

The fact is that the failure of the Cur Deus Hlomo lies at 
the very outset of his attempt. It lies in his statement of 
the problem, and his view of the meaning of the terms with 
which he starts: What is sin? and what is forgiveness 
of sin? In his 11th and 12th chapters he raises such 
questions as these; and by the time he has answered them 
a really adequate rationale of atonement has become im- 
possible. His answer to the great question may be as 
good as his statement of the question allows. But his 
question is conceived arithmetically, and raised really in 
terms of arithmetic. What wonder if the conclusion 
reached is also arithmetical? “Non est aliud peccare 
quam Deo non reddere debitum.’ Here is a definition, 
which—though true no doubt as far as it goes—is fatal. It 
makes sin in its essence quantitative, and, as quantitative, 
external to the self of the sinner, and measurable, as if it 
had a self, in itself. The problem caused by sin is exhibited 
as if it were a faulty equation, which by fresh balancing of 
quantities is to be equated aright. But, in fact, sin is not 
in what I do so really as in what I am. What I am may 
be evidenced, nay, may be actualized, through what I do. 
Yet the sin lies not in the deed, as deed; but in the ‘I,’ as 
doer of the deed. The‘I’ is not distinguishable from the 
sin. The sin is within the ‘I.’ It is in what ‘1’ am. 

It follows that it is an impossibility, in any full sense of 
the words, ‘dimittere peccatum, so long as, in real fact, 
‘peccatum’ remains, But if sin is within the ‘I,’ it does 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 371 


remain until the ‘I’ be changed. It is an essential altera- 
tion of the very constitution of the ‘I,’ not a transaction or 
equation external to the ‘I, in which the true forgiveness 
of sins finds its meaning. There could hardly be a better 
illustration than the Cur Deus Homo, of the inherent 
failure of any exposition of atonement, which is not, at 
every turn, in terms of personality ; which does not find, 
in all the terms concerned, in sin, in punishment, in 
penitence, in forgiveness, in atonement, meanings which, 
if conceived of apart from personality, and not as aspects, 
or states, or possibilities of personality, would rapidly become 
no meanings at all. 

The quantitative character of the conception comes out 
very clearly as Anselm works towards his final conclusions. 
The question is how to cancel the great “amount” of the 
“debt” of humanity to God. The service of Christ’s life as 
man does not count for this purpose, for that was anyhow 
due,a due of humanity to God. But his death was (a) not 
due, and (0) infinite in amount. Therefore the amount of 
this, which was zof due, being infinite, outweighed the 
amount of all the sins of the world, which though vast were 
not literally infinite. Nothing could be more simply 
arithmetical, or more essentially unreal. And yet the 
unreality of the conclusion is no more than was inevitably 
involved in the artificiality of the conceptions with which 
the logic first set out. 

Three further remarks may be added about S. Anselm. 
First, that while it is easy for us to say what is artificial 
and unsatisfactory in his thought, the process of dis- 
entangling the true heart of the thought itself from the 


? Sidicimus quia dabit seipsum ad obediendum Deo, ut perseveranter servando 
justitiam subdat se ejus voluntati; non erit hoc dare quod Deus ab illo non 
exigat ex debito. Omnis enim rationalis creatura debet hanc obedientiam 
Deo. pt. II. ch. xi. 

Video hominem illum plane, quem quzerimus, talem esse oportere, qui nec ex 
necessitate moriatur, quoniam erit omnipotens ; nec ex debito quia nunquam 
peccator erit ; et mori possit ex libera voluntate, quia necessarium erit. Ibid. 

Cogita etiam quia peccata tantum sunt odibilia, quantum sunt mala, et 
vita ista tantum amabilis est quantum est bona. Unde sequitur, quia vita ista 
plus est amabilis, quam sint peccata odibilia, 

Boso. Non possum hoc non intelligere. 

Anselm. Putasne tantum bonum tam amabile posse sufficere ad_ sol- 
vendum, quod debetur pro peccatis totius mundi ? 

Boso. Imo plus potest in infinitum. 

Anselm. Vides igitur quomodo vita hzec vincat omnia peccata, si pro illis 
detur. 

Boso. Aperte. 

Anselm. Si ergo dare vitam est mortem accipere, sicut datio hujus vit« 
prevalet omnibus hominum peccatis, ita et acceptio mortis. Ib. ch. xiv. 


372, ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


forms under which it expressed itself was really of course 
a gradual one, so that neither he himself (though he knew 
how much the truth must transcend his expression of it) 
nor his contemporaries (though they might demur, with 
more or less clearness, to some parts of his expression) 
were really able to see, as in process of time men learned 
to see, exactly how much of what he said belonged to his 
truth, and how much to the imperfectly illustrative forms 
in which he tried to embody it. The second remark will 
be that, in drawing marked attention to the imperfectness 
of the forms in which he embodied his thought, we have of 
necessity done injustice to the large amount of true insight 
and devotional reality—to the obvious sincerity that is, of 
the Christian Spirit—which breathes through what he says, 
even where the logical form of it is found to be ultimately 
least tenable. And the third will be that whatever he said 
was commended to his contemporaries, and to the whole 
Church, by this obvious sincerity of the spirit in which it 
was conceived ; it was commended not only by the tact- 
fulness of the manner in which he approached current 
prejudices, but still more by that most persuasive of 
arguments, the fragrance of a saintly life. 


But fragrant as is the memory of the saintly Anselm, 
it is probable that modern thought is really more interested 
and more likely to be interested, in the somewhat frag- 
mentary suggestions towards an explanation of the atone- 
ment, which are connected with the name of Abelard. 
The teaching of Anselm, whatever it might be, was likely 
to be commended by the reverence which inevitably 
belonged to his person and character. But with Abelard 
it was different. He never indeed brought his suggestions 
on the subject, which are chiefly in his commentary on the 
Romans, into a connected and completely self-consistent 
system. But if he had, they would hardly have been 
accepted. There was not the fragrant life, and the gracious 
personality, nor the persuasive tone, the devout patience, 
the constraining beauty of spirit, which would all have 
been necessary, in an age of rigid and narrow discipline of 
ecclesiastical thought, to commend in the teeth of a (not 
unnatural) suspicion of unorthodoxy, the really beautiful 
conceptions which underlay his thought. Neither was his 
conception adequately complete, nor was the tone of his 
exposition adequately persuasive. Nor, it must be added, 
was he personally quite capable of holding the position of . 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 373 


a mighty prophet in the Church. The life of Abzlard is 
a tragedy throughout,—fascinating, if at all, as tragedy,—a 
life of stress and storm, full of its own strange horror, and 
strange pathos. Something more was needed than it was 
in him to supply, in order to commend—lI will not quite 
say the Abzlardian view of the atonement, but rather the 
view which he approached, but to which he did, after all, 
very imperfect justice, to the heart and conscience of 
Christendom. Whatever sympathy we may feel for him, 
intellectually or otherwise, it would not be fair to condemn 
those who, under all the circumstances, looked askance on 
his teaching and set themselves to oppose it, if only they 
had themselves been scrupulously fair in the methods of 
their opposition. 

But incomplete and imperfectly consistent though his 
teaching was, it contains, beyond all question, the germ, 
and something more than the germ, of an exposition of the 
atonement far deeper and more inclusive than that of the 
theologians who condemned him. 

It may be well to put together various things which he 
does say about Christ’s atoning work, beginning with some 
of those in which he most conforms to the thought of his 
age, and asserts the things which he was accused of 
denying. Thus he asserts that, seeing that we were 
bought by the blood of Christ, we must have been bought 
from the master, who, by the bond of our sins, held us 
enslaved, and to whom it belonged to fix his price. It 
was the devil, then, who, as our master and owner, 
determined his price, and who asked for us the blood 
of Christ. 

“Scriptum est in Epistola Petri quia redempti sumus 
“precioso sanguine unigeniti, ab aliquo sine dubio empti 
cujus eramus servi, qui et pretium proposuit quod voluit, 
ut dimitteret quod tenebat. Tenebat autem nos diabolus, 
cui districti fueramus peccatis nostris. | Poposcit ergo 
pretium nostrum sanguinem Christi.” ? 

So, in commenting on the last verses of Rom. vii., he 
speaks of us as “justly delivered from the dominion of 
sin or the devil”: “ut nos juste a dominio peccati sive 
diaboli possit eruere et a captivitate przdicta tanquam 
suos reducere.” 

So, on v. 6, he says that Christ’s dying for the ungodly 
was to deliver them from condemnation,—“ ut eos videlicet 
a damnatione liberaret.” 

1 In Rom, Lib, II. (on ch. iv. 11). 


374 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


So, on viii. 3, “God caused his co-eternal Wisdom to 
assume passible and mortal humanity, that while He 
subjected Himself to the punishment of sin, He might 
appear to have a personal share in the flesh that is 
conceived in sin.” “Co-zternam sibi sapientiam fecit 
humiliari usque ad assumptionem passibilis et mortalis 
hominis, ita ut per pcenam peccati cui subjacebat, ipse 
etiam carnem peccati, id est in peccato conceptam, habere 
videretur.”, Commenting on the same passage, he goes 
on: “And for sin, that is, the punishment of sin, which 
He bore for us in the flesh”; “de peccato, id est de 
poena peccati quam pro nobis sustinuit in carne, id est 
in humanitate assumpta non secundum divinitatem.” 

And so in the so-called Apologia he says, with con- 
fident brevity, that the Son of God was incarnate 
that He might deliver us from the slavery of sin, and 
the yoke of the devil, and might open to us by His 
death the entrance into everlasting life. “Solum Filium 
Dei incarnatum profiteor, ut nos a servitute peccati et a jugo 
diaboli liberaret, et supernz aditum vite morte sua nobis 
reseraret.” 

On Rom. iv. 25, he lays down that there are two ways 
in which Christ died “for our sins” ; first, because the sins 
which were the cause of His death, and of which He bore 
the ‘ poena,’ were our sins: and secondly, because His death 
was to do away our sins, purchasing our exemption from 
‘ poena,’ while it also won us by the revelation of His love, 
and so drew away, from any will to sin, the souls that were 
in love with Him. ‘ Duobus modis propter delicta nostra 
mortuus dicitur, tum quia nos deliquimus propter quod 
ille moreretur, et peccatum commisimus cujus ille poenam 
sustinuit, tum etiam ut peccata nostra moriendo tolleret, 
i.e., poenam peccatorum introducens nos in Paradisum 
pretio suz mortis auferret, et, per exhibitionem tantz 
gratiz, quia, ut ipse ait, majorem dilectionem nemo habet, 
animos nostros a voluntate peccandi retraheret, et in 
summam suam dilectionem intenderet.” 

The relations of cause and effect, which are not quite 
clear in the second half of this thought, become clearer in 
his reply to the ‘quzestio’ raised upon the passage ending 
Rom. iii, 26. Here he says explicitly that our real 
justification, in which we are reconciled to God, is the 
Divine love kindled in our own hearts, through our appre- 
hension of the Divine love manifested in the crucifixion. 
It is the supreme presence of love within ourselves—the 








ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 375 


direct result of the passion of Christ, a love which lifts us 
out of the slavery of sin, into the true liberty of the 
children of God. It was for the kindling of this true 
liberty of love in man, that Christ declares Himself to 
have come. 

“Nobis autem videtur quod in hoc justificati sumus 
in sanguine Christi, et Deo reconciliati, quod per hanc 
singularem gratiam nobis exhibitam, quod Filius suus 
nostram susceperit naturam, et in ipso nos tam verbo 
quam exemplo instituendo usque ad mortem perstitit, 
nos sibi amplius per amorem astrinxit; ut tanto divine 
gratie accensi beneficio, nil jam tolerare propter ipsum 
vera reformidet caritas. . . . Redemptio itaque nostra 
est illa summa in nobis per passionem Christi dilectio, 
quz non solum a servitute peccati liberat sed veram nobis 
filiorum Dei libertatem acquirit; ut amore ejus potius 
quam timore cuncta impleamus, qui nobis tantam 
exhibuit gratiam, qua major inveniri ipso attestante 
non potest. Majorem hac, inquit, dilectionem nemo habet, 
quam ut animam suam ponat pro amicis suis. De hoc 
quidem amore Dominus alibi ait, Jenem vent mittere in 
terram, et quid volo nist ut ardeat? Ad hanc itaque veram 
caritatis libertatem in hominibus propagandam se venisse 
testatur. Quod diligenter attendens apostolus_ in 
sequentibus ait, Quza caritas Dei diffusa est in cordibus 
nostris per Spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobts,” } 

The passage is a very striking one. But there are two 
matters for sincere regret ; the first that he seems to lay so 
much causal stress upon the ‘exhibition’ of the love of the 
Cross, as though he conceived it as working its effect mainly 
as an appeal, or incitement, to feeling : and the second that 
he fails to follow up the clue which his own quotation 
of Rom. v. 5 might have supplied to him. The doctrine 
of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ within the 
personality of Christians, would have supplied the whole 
truth which he desired, without the risk, to which his own 
expressions seem to be liable, of making the effect of Calvary 
itself appear primarily as an appeal to human emotions. 

The same thought is re-echoed when he comes to the 
passage in Rom. v. itself. “ Merito dixi caritatem diffusam 
in cordibus nostris. Nam propter quid aliud, nisi videlicet 
ut in nobis dilataretur caritas Dei?” 

“Notandum vero est apostolum hoc loco modum nostrz 
redemptionis per mortem Christi patenter exprimere, cum 

1 Rom. v. 5, with 6 and 8. The passage is in the comment on Rom, iii. 26. 


376 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


videlicet eum pro nobis non ob aliud mortuum dicit, nisi 
per veram illam caritatis libertatem in nobis propagandam, 
per hanc videlicet qua nobis exhibuit summam dilectionem, 
sicut ipse ait Majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet etc..... 
Commendat Deus.| id est, zdificat sive confirmat. swam 
caritatem in nobts.| quoniam scilicet Dei Christus Filius pro 
nobis mortuus est cum adhuc peccatores essemus.| Quod si 
ita respexit cum essemus peccatores, morti scilicet unicum 
suum pro nobis tradendo, multo magzis ergo.| id est, multo 
facilius sive libentius vel probabilius nunc respiciet nos ad 
salvationem jam justificatos in sanguine suo, id est, jam per 
dilectionem quam in eo habemus, ex hac summa gratia, 
quam nobis exhibuit, pro nobis, scilicet, adhuc peccatoribus 
moriendo. Et hoc est, salvz erimus ab ira.| scilicet futura, 
id est, a peccatorum vindicta, per zpsum.] videlicet Christum 
pro nobis semel morientem, et sapius orantem, et assidue 
nos instruentem.” 

It was thus that the Cross really did what the law had 
tried and failed to do, for the law had commanded love to 
God and to man: but the Cross drew it out perforce: and 
in this love it is that sin is condemned and destroyed. This 
is what is meant when Christ is said to have been made a 
victim for us. “ Non dicit opera legis, que nequaquam jus- 
tificant, sed quod lex przcipit de his que ad justificationem 
attinent, sine quibus justificari non possumus, sicut est Dei 
et proximi caritas; quam leximperfectam facit, sicut supra 
monuimus ; sed per Christum in nobis perficitur. Et hoc 
est quod ait, wt caritas Det et proximi, quam lex precipit, 
in nobis perfecta nos justificaret. Ipsum quippe Christum 
tanquam Deum, ipsum proximum vere diligere, summum 
illud beneficium, quod nobis exhibuit, compellit; quod est in 
nobis peccatum damnare, id est, reatum omnem et culpam 
destruere per caritatem ex hoc summo beneficio. Quod 
verius, inquit, habetur apud Grecos pro peccato damnavit 
peccatum tipse hostia pro peccato factus. Per hance hostiam 
carnis que dicitur pro peccato damnavit, id est delevit 
peccatum, quia remissionem quoque.peccatorum nobis in 
sanguine suo et reconciliationem operatus est.” 4 

Thus, then, we hang wholly upon Christ, in believing 
faith, which is our righteousness. “Hec est illa justitia 
que ex fide est Christi, id est, ipsa fides in Christum habita 
nos justificans,” * 

And true faith is not only of the lips but of the heart 
and the will, of the character and the life. ‘“ Ore suo con- 

1 On Rom, viii. 3. 2 On Rom. x. 6, 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 377 


fitetur, qui quod enunciat intelligit. Corde suo credit qui 
cor et voluntatem suam applicat his que credit, ut ipsa 
videlicet fides eum ad opera trahat ; veluti cum quis credendo 
Christum a mortuis resurrexisse in vitam zternam, satagit 
prout potest ut vestigia ejus sequendo ad ejusdem vite 
beatitudinem perveniat.” 4 

It would be unfair to pass from Abzlard without some 
representation of those more pathetic expressions which 
exhibit, at least in part, the translation of his speculation 
into his experience. How really and how profoundly he 
conceived of the study of the Cross as entering into the 
very being of him who studied it, may be gathered from his 
5th letter, the letter in which he attempts to give comfort to 
Heloissa, when she had bewailed, in language most piercing 
and pathetic, the haunting misery of her repentance. 

“ Art thou not moved to tears or to compunction by the 
only begotten of God, who, having done no wrong, was 
for thy sake and for all, seized by most impious men, and 
dragged away and scourged, and with covered face.mocked, 
smitten with the hand, spat upon, crowned with thorns, and 
at length hung between thieves on the gibbet of the Cross, 
then so disgraceful, and slain by the sort of death which 
was then most appalling and accursed. Have Him, my 
sister,—thine own and the whole Church’s true spouse— 
have Him before thine eyes, carry Him in thy mind! 
Gaze upon Him as He goes out to be crucified for thee, 
laden with His own Cross. Be thou of the people -and the 
women who were bewailing and lamenting Him (quoting 
Luke xxiii. 27-31). Suffer thou with Him who suffered 
willingly for thy redemption, and be thou pierced with Him 
who was crucified for thee. Stand,in mind, ever at His 
sepulchre, and lament and mourn with the women, of whom 
it is written (as I said before) ‘The women, sitting at the 
tomb, lamented the Lord with tears.’ Prepare, with them, 
the ointments for His burial—yet better ointments than 
those, of the spirit not of the body—for He who received 
not those spices asks for these. So, with love’s utter 
devotion, be thou pierced to the heart! He, Himself, by the 
word of Jeremiah, calls His believers to this fellowship of 
passion and of piercing. ‘O all ye who pass by, behold 
and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,’ that 
is, if there be any sufferer whose suffering so calls for 
sympathy and sorrow; since I alone, without fault, atone for 
the faults of others. He is, Himself, the way by which the 

2 On Rom, x. 9. 


378 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


faithful pass out of exile to their home. And the Cross, of 
which He thus cries, He has lifted up as a ladder to us for 
this. He, the only-begotten of God, was killed for thy 
sake, as an offering, of His own will. Over Him, not 
another, let thy sorrow be in entering into His sufferings, 
and enter into His sufferings by sorrow! Fulfil the 
prophecy of Zechariah about devout souls: ‘they shall 
wail,’ he says, ‘a wailing as for an only son, and shall mourn 
as one that mourneth over his first-born’ (Zech. xii. 10). 
See, my sister, how great the lamentation is, among those 
that love the king, over the death of his first and only son. 
Observe the lamentation of the household, the mourning 
which possesses the whole court; and when thou comest to 
the bride of the only-begotten who is dead, her wailing will 
be greater than thou canst bear. Be this, my sister, thy 
lamentation, this thy wailing, for this is the Bridegroom to 
whom thou hast joined thyself in blessed marriage. He 
has bought thee, not with what is His, but with Himself. 
With His own blood He bought thee and redeemed thee. 
See what right He has over thee, and consider of how high 
a price thou art. The apostle, when he thinks of this price, 
and in the light of this price, weighs his value for whom it is 
given, and also what return he should make for so great a 
favour, says, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is 
crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ Thou are greater 
than heaven, greater than the world; for thy price is the 
very creator of the world. What, I ask, did He see in 
thee—He, who has lack of nothing—that to win thee He did 
battle, even to the last agonies of a death so full of horror 
and of shame? What, I say, does He seek in thee except 
thyself? Heis the true lover, who longs for thyself, not for 
anything that is thine. He is the true friend, who said 
Himself, when ready to die for thee, ‘Greater love hath no 
man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 4 


1 Non te ad lacrymas aut ad compunctionem movet unigenitus Dei innocens 
pro te et omnibus ab impiissimis comprehensus, distractus, flagellatus, et velata 
facie illusus, et colaphizatus, sputis conspersus, spinis coronatus, et tandem in 
illo crucis tunc tam ignominioso patibulo inter latrones suspensus, atque illo 
tunc horrendo et execrabili genere mortis interfectus? Hune semper, soror, 
verum tuum et totius ecclesize sponsum pre oculis habe, mente gere. Intuere 
hunc exeuntem ad crucifigendum pro te et bajulantem sibi crucem, Esto de 
populo et mulieribus, que plangebant et lamentabantur eum. ... Patienti 
sponte pro redemptione tua compatere, et super crucifixo pro te compungere. 
Sepulchro ejus mente semper assiste, et cum fidelibus feminis lamentare et 
luge; de quibus etiam ut jam supra memini scriptum est, JJulieres sedentes 
ad monumentum lamentabantur flentes Dominum. Para cum illis sepulturze ejus 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 379 


And here are a few sentences from the prayer which the 
letter ends by commending to her: 

“ Pardon thou, O most benign! Thou who art benignity 
itself! Pardon even the exceeding greatness of our sins, 
and may the unutterable vastness of thy pity explore the 
multitude of our offences! Punish us, I beseech thee, now, 
who confess our guilt, and spare us in the life to come! 
Punish for a season, that thou mayest not punish for ever! 
Take to thy servants the rod of correction, not the sword of 
fury! Make the flesh suffer, that thou mayest save the 
souls! Be with us to purify, not to revenge! in mercy 
rather than in justice! a pitying Father, not an austere 
Lord! Prove us, and try us, O Lord, as the prophet asks 
for himself; as if he plainly said, measure first my powers, 
and temper to them the burthen of thy trial! as blessed 
Paul said in promise to thy believers, ‘ For God is powerful, 
who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
able, but will with the temptation make also a way of 
escape that ye may be able to bear it.’ Thou; O Lord, hast 
joined us together ; and hast separated us; when it pleased 
Thee, and how it pleased Thee. Now, O Lord, complete in 
the greatness of Thy mercy what Thou hast in mercy begun ! 
Whom Thou hast separated once for all in the world, unite 


unguenta, sed meliora spiritualia quidem, non corporalia ; hec enim requirit 
aromata qui non suscepit illa. Super his toto devotionis affectu compungere. 
Ad quam quidem compassionis compunctionem ipse etiam per Hieremiam 
fideles adhortatur dicens, O vos ommes qui transitis per viam, attendite et 
videte si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. Id est si super aliquo patiente ita 
est per compassionem dolendum, cum ego scilicet solus sine culpa quod alii deli- 
querintluam, Ipseautem est via per quam fideles de exilio transeunt ad patriam. 
Qui etiam crucem, de qua sic clamat, ad hoc nobis erexit scalam. Hic pro te occisus 
est unigenitus Dei, oblatus est, quia voluit. Super hoc uno compatiendo dole, 
dolendo compatere. Et quod per Zachariam prophetam de animabus devotis 
preedictum est comple: A/angent, inquit, planctum quast super unigenitum, et 
dolebunt super eum ut doleri solet in morte primogeniti. Vide, soror, quantus 
sit planctus his qui regem diligunt super morte primogeniti ejus et unigeniti. 
Intuere quo planctu familia, quo merore tota consummatur curia : et cum ad 
Sponsam unigeniti mortui pervenisti, intolerabiles ululatus ejus non sustinebis. 
Hic tuus, soror, planctus, hic tuus sit ululatus, que te huic Sponso felici 
copulasti matrimonio, Emit te iste non suis, sed seipso. Proprio sanguine 
emit te, et redemit. Quantum jus in te habeat vide, et quam preciosa sis 
intuere. Hoc quidem pretium suum Apostolus attendens, et in hoc pretio quanti 
sit ipse, pro quo ipsum datur, perpendens, et quam tante gratize vicem referat 
adnectens: Absit mithz, inquit, gloriari nist in cruce Domini nostri Jesu 
Christi, per quem mthi mundus crucifixus est, et ego mundo. Major es ccelo, 
major es mundo ; cujus pretium ipse conditor mundi factus est. Quid in te, 
rogo, viderit, qui nullius eget, ut pro te acquirenda usque ad agonias tam 
horrendz atque ignominiosz mortis certaverit? Quid in te, inquam, quaerit 
nisi te ipsam ? verus est amicus, qui te ipsam, non tua, desiderat. Verusest 
amicus, qui pro te moriturus dicebat Majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, 
ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicts suis, 


380 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


us to Thyself for ever in heaven ; Thou our hope, our portion, 
our expectation, our consolation, O Lord, who art blessed 
for ever and ever. Amen. 

“Farewell in Christ, Christ’s spouse! in Christ farewell, 
and in Christ be thy life. Amen.” 

It is abundantly clear that Bernard of Clairvaux did no 
justice to Abzlard. The faith of Abzlard in the Cross 
was a faith to inspire the most searching penitence, and 
the most ardent love; a faith which really reached beyond 
its own statement of itself; a faith in which a true peni- 
tent could live, and could die, in Christ. And yet, on the 
side of theological exposition, it was really defective 
still, It would have been, indeed, unfair for any prose- 
cutor to assert that Abelard explained the who/e meaning 
of Calvary as ozly an instruction, a pattern, an exhibition, 
a commendation of love. But that these things should 
be formally urged on the Pope by one whose indictment 
would not even be seen by the accused, far less answered, 
or checked in any way, but accepted as a judicial summing 
up of the case, was, judicially speaking, monstrous.2? Yet 


1 Ignosce, O benignissime, immo benignitas ipsa, ignosce et tantis criminibus 
nostris, et ineffabilis misericordiz tuz multitudinem culparum nostrarum 
immensitas experiatur. Puni obsecro in praesenti reos, ut parcas in futuro. Puni 
ad horam, ne puniasin eternum, Accipe in servos virgam correctionis, non 
gladium furoris. Afflige carnem ut conserves animas. Adsis purgator non 
ultor; benignus magis quam justus; Pater misericors, non austerus Dominus, 
Proba nos Domine, et tenta, sicut de semetipso rogat Propheta; ac si aperte 
diceret, Prius vires inspice, ac secundum eas tentationum onera moderare. 
Quod et beatus Paulus fidelibus tuis promittens ait: Potens est enim Deus qui 
non patietur vos tentaré supra id quod potestis, sed factet cum tentatione etiam 
proventum ut possitis sustinere. Conjunxisti nos Domine, et divisisti quando 
placuit tibi, et quo modo placuit. Nunc quod, Domipe, misericorditer ccepisti, 
misericordissime comple. Et quos a se semel divisisti in mundo, perenniter 
tibi conjungas in coelo, Spes nostra, pars nostra, expectatio nostra, consolatio 
nostra, Domine qui es benedictus in szecula, Amen. 

Vale in Christo sponsa Christi, in Christo vale, et Christo vive. Amen. 

2 Heec est justitia hominis in sanguine Redemptoris; quam homo per- 
ditionis exsufflans et subsannans, in tantum evacuare conatur, ut totum 
quod Dominus gloriz semetipsum exinanivit; quod... . passus indigna; 
quod demum per mortem crucis in sua reversus: ad id solum putet et disputet 
redigendum, ut traderet hominibus formam vitee vivendo et docendo ; patiendo 
autem et moriendo caritatis metam preefigeret. Ergo docuit justitiam et 
non dedit ; ostendit caritatem, sed non infudit; et sic rediit in sua ? (vii. 17). 
Non requisivit Deus Pater sanguinem Filii, sed tamen acceptavit oblatum ; 
non sanguinem sitiens, sed salutem, quia salus erit in sanguine. Salus, 
plane, et non sicut iste sapit et scribit sola caritatis ostensio. Sic enim 
concludit tot calumnias et invectiones suas quas in Deum tam impie quam 
imperite evomuit, ut dicat: Totum esse quod Deus in carne apparuit, nostram 
de verbo et exemplo ipsius institutionem, sive ut postmodum dicit, in- 
structionem; totum quod passus et mortuus est, suze erga nos caritatis 
ostensionem vel commendationem (viii. 22). Ceterum quid prodest quod 
nos instituit si non restituit? . .. . si omne quod profuit Christus in sola 


ee 


—— a 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 381 


however keenly we may feel the judicial unfairness of 
Bernard and Innocent, there is certainly something to be 
said for Bernard’s view, or instinct, that Abzlard’s position, 
as Abelard himself expounded it, had danger in it. The 
things which he had said about ‘ransom’ and ‘ purchase,’ 
and ‘bearing the geua of sin, ought of course to have been 
before any court which affected to try him. And yet it may 
be doubted whether they really quite cohere with his proper 
thought. He seems in them to be doing a somewhat con- 
ventional (and indeed in some cases even undue) homage 
to conventional modes of expression. Plainly his real 
heart is rather in such statements as that our real justifica- 
tion is the Divine Love within us. Was he then quite 
capable of expounding the atonement adequately upon this 
basis—the basis of his own truest feeling? He comes 
indeed, in many respects, very near to an exposition which, 
in depth and comprehensiveness and vital reality, would have 
been far in advance of what was current in his own, or 
indeed in almost any other generation. But I must own 
that he does not seem to me to attain to it. If S. Bernard, 
instead of arrogating the position of a judge, had been 
merely, in courteous controversy, pointing out what seemed 
to him to be dangerous tendencies, he might have been 
reasonably anxious about the emphasis laid on ‘the 
instruction’ through the ‘exhibition’ of love. It is true 
that such phrases say less than Abelard meant. The 
emphasis of his thought is not really so much upon Calvary 
as a picture exhibited before our eyes, as it is upon Calvary 
as a constraining and transforming influence upon our 
characters. It is not so much really upon the love of God 
manifested to us, as upon the love of God generated within 
us. The difference is important. And, so far, he is wholly 
in the right direction. But if the question be pressed, Low 
is it generated? Abzlard’s exposition seems to have no 
deeper answer to give than that the exhibition of the Cross 
constrains it. He dwells on the Cross very finely, as an 
incentive to love; but hardly conceives of it more profoundly 
than as an incentive. He has lost the emphasis upon the 
thought of humanity as a corporate unity, summed up 
and represented in Christ, so that what Christ did and 
suffered, Christians themselves also suffered and did in 
Christ,—which was so strong and clear in the earliest 


fuit ostensione virtutum, restat ut dicatur quod Adam quoque ex sola peccati 
ostensione nocuerit, ix. 23, etc. (All these are in Bernard’s letter to Pope 
Innocent II.) 


382 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Christian theologians; and, on the other hand, he has 
totally failed to interpret the production of Divine love 
within us, not as a mere emotion of ours, elicited in us as 
our response to an external incentive, but as being the 
doctrine of the Holy Ghost ;—that presence of Christ as 
constitutive Spirit within, which is the extension of the 
Incarnation and Atonement, the very essentia of the true 
Church of Christ, the real secret of the personal being 
of Christians, and therefore the characteristic doctrine of 
the Christian faith, as it is the characteristic experience of 
the Christian life. 


Had he carried his thought on, this one bold step further, — 


and had he possessed the charm of grave reserve and personal 
saintliness, which would have served to commend his theories 
to the hearts as well as to the thoughts, or rather to the 
thoughts, because first to the hearts, of his own contempor- 
aries, the history of the doctrine in subsequent generations 
might have been very different. As it is, it may well be 
doubted whether Bernard was not at least half right in his 
underlying instinct ; andwhetherthe acceptance of Abelard’s 
teaching in the somewhat inconsistent as well as incomplete 
form in which Abelard himself expressed it, would not have 
led towards a view of the Atonement which would have 
been perilously incomplete. In the stress laid upon that 
constraining appeal to the feelings which the story of the 
Cross is indeed, as subjective appeal, calculated to make, 
it is more than probable that the sense of the unique 
greatness of the historical fact, as historical fact, of the 
sacrifice of perfectly triumphant Righteousness, consum- 
mated once for all, for man, in man, and transforming, once 
for all, the meaning and the possibility of man,—would have 
been, to say the least, very seriously impaired. 


Before closing this—most fragmentary—excursion into 
history, it seems well to add some consideration of the 
expositions of Atonement which have been most current 
in our own day and amongst ourselves. 

There is probably no book on the subject more widely 
known and read amongst churchmen than the lectures 
of the late Dr Dale. But in order to appreciate it rightly, 
it is well to remember something of the conditions in 
reference to which it was written. In an age which had, 
for the most part, been accustomed to a doctrine of atone- 
ment of the rigidly logical and crudely substitutional kind, 


ee ee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 383 


the leaven of a more philosophical and more humanizing 
spirit had begun on many sides to be felt. The sermons, 
for instance, which were preached at Lincoln’s Inn by the 
Rev. F. D. Maurice upon the Doctrine of Sacrifice breathe 
a spirit of devoutness and humanity very unlike that of the 
more conventional exponents of what was supposed to be 
orthodox theology. It may be doubted indeed whether 
the position of Mr Maurice, valuable as it was in its 
positive teaching, and in the temper which underlay its 
teaching, was really quite adequate to the truth. It had 
in it something of the character of a reaction: and 
probably, as is usual in such cases, did less than full justice 
to that against which it reacted. It protested against 
a crudely objective atonement. Perhaps the conception 
of atonement which it substituted gave hardly its adequate 
place to the objective fact. He was clear that the ultimate 
purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was a moral transformation of 
ourselves. Perhaps he was hardly successful in correlat- 
ing together with exactness the work of Calvary and its 
effects ; or in showing Zow the moral transformation of man- 
kind was connected with the fact of Christ’s death. It 
is possible that he inclined too much to what is known as 
the simply subjective view: the thought of Christ’s death as 
a constraining appeal and incentive to the love of man. 
I do not, however, propose to dwell at length upon the 
sermons of Mr Maurice, or to discuss the question of their 
adequacy, but should like before leaving them, to quote one 
passage of considerable length, which shows much of the 
best and deepest character of his thought: 

“There was a time in our Lord’s life on earth, we are 
told, when a man met Him, coming out of the tombs, exceed- 
ing fierce, whom no man could bind, no, not with chains. 
That man was ossessed by an unclean spirit. Of all men 
upon earth, you would say that he was the one between 
whom and the pure and holy Jesus there must have 
existed the most intense repugnance. What Pharisee, 
who shrank from the filthy and loathsome words of that 
maniac, could have experienced one-thousandth part of 
the inward and intense loathing which Christ must have 
experienced for the mind that those words expressed? 
For it was into that He looked ; that which He understoud ; 
that which in His inmost being He must have felt, which 
must have given Him a shock such as it could have given 
to no other. I repeat the words; I beseech you to con- 
sider them ; He must have felt the wickedness of that man 


384 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


in His inmost being. He must have been conscious of it, 
as no one else was or could be. Now, if we ever have had 
the consciousness, in a very slight degree, of evil in another 
man, has it not been, up ¢o that degree, as if the evil were 
in ourselves? Suppose the offender were a friend, or a 
brother, or a child, has not this sense of personal shame, 
of the evil being ours, been proportionably stronger and 
more acute? However much we might feel ourselves 
called upon to act as judges, this perception still remained. 
It was not crushed even by the anger, the selfish anger, 
and impatience of an injury done to us, which, most 
probably, mingled with and corrupted the purer indignation 
and sorrow. Most of us confess with humiliation how 
little we have had of this lively consciousness of other 
men’s impurity, or injustice, or falsehood, or baseness. 
But we do confess it; we know, therefore, that we should 
be better if we had more of it. In our best moments we 
admire with a fervent admiration—in our worse, we envy 
with a wicked envy—those in whom we trace most of it. 
And we have had just enough of it to be certain that it 
belongs to the truest and most radical part of the character, 
not to its transient impulses. Suppose, then, this carried 
up to its highest point, cannot you, at a great distance, 
apprehend that Christ may have entered into the sin of the 
maniac’s spirit, may have had the most inward realization 
of it, not because it was like what was in Himself, but 
because it was utterly and intensely unlike? And yet are 
you not sure that this could not have been, unless He had 
the most perfect and thorough sympathy with this man, 
whose nature was transformed into the likeness of a brute, 
whose spirit had acquired the image of a devil? Does the 
coexistence of this sympathy and this antipathy perplex 
you? Oh! ask yourselves which you could bear to be 
away; which you could bear to be weaker than the other! 
Ask yourselves whether they must not dwell together in 
their highest degree, in their fullest power, in any one of 
whom you could say, ‘ He is perfect; he is the standard of 
excellence; in him there is the full image of God,’ 
Diminish by one atom the loathing and horror, or the 
fellowship and sympathy, and by that atom you lower the 
character; you are sure that you have brought it nearer to 
the level of your own low imaginations ; that you have made 
it less like the Being who would raise you towards Himself. 

“T have taken a single instance, because you can better 
apprehend the whole truth in that instance, and because 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 385 


from it you may understand that I am not speaking of 
abstractions, but of that which concerns us as human 
beings, as conscious sinners. But now carry on your 
thoughts beyond that particular man with the unclean 
spirit; carry them to any man in the crowds whom our 
Lord fed, and to whom He preached: carry them to these, 
because they were specimens of the race; because His 
knowledge of their evils is that which He must have had 
of the evils which are in all the world; because His 
sympathy with them is the sympathy which He must 
have had with all who bore their nature: and then you 
will, I think, begin to doubt whether S. Paul could have 
diluted the language which you find in the text without 
cheating us of a divine treasure. If he had said that 
Christ took upon Him all the consequences of ow: sins, 
would this have been an equivalent for the words, ‘ made 
Sin’? There might be a deep meaning in that assertion. 
The sympathy which I have spoken of, extended, as we 
know, to all the ills of which men are heirs. The evangelist 
says, speaking of His healing the sick, Himself took our 
infirmities and bare our sicknesses; as if every cure He 
wrought implied an actual participation in the calamity. 
He endured in this sense the consequences of sin in 
particular men; He endured the death which is the 
consequence of sin in a// men. But men have asked more 
than this. Their superstitions show how much more is 
required to satisfy them ; they have asked for some god, 
or demigod, who could not only sympathize in their sorrows 
but in their evil; they could only conceive of sympathy 
coming through participation of it; the gods must do like 
them, be like them, or they are cold and distant objects 
of reverence. The demand is indeed monstrous; all the 
perverseness and bewilderment of sin lie in it. But to get 
rid of the falsehood of the desire, you must vindicate its 
truth. Here is the vindication: He knows no sin, 
_ therefore He identifies Himself with the sinner. That 
phrase, zdentifies Himself with the sinner, is somewhat 
nearer, I think, to the sense of the Apostle than the phrase, 
takes the consequences or the punishment of sin. But still, 
do you not feel how much feebler it is than his, feebler in 
spirit more even than in form? It conveys no impression 
of the sense, the taste, the anguish of sin, which St Paul 
would have us think of, as realized by the Son of God— 
a sense, a taste, an anguish, which are not only compatible 
with the wot knowing sin, but would be impossible in 
28 


386 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


anyone who did know it. The awful isolation of the 
words, ‘ Ye shall leave me alone; united with the craving 
for human affection in the words ‘wth desire I have 
desired to eat this Passover with you,—the agony of the 
spirit which is gathered in the words, ‘/f tt be posstble, let 
this cup pass from me, with the submission of the words, 
‘Not as [ will, but as Thou wilt’; above all, the crushing 
for a moment even of that one infinite comfort, ‘ Yet J am 
not alone, because the Father ts with me; when the cry 
was heard, ‘ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
me ?’—these revelations tell us a little of what it was to be 
made Sin; if we get the least glimpse into them, we shall 
not dream that the Apostle could have spoken less boldly 
if he was to speak the truth.” } 

This quotation, whether it be more or less necessary for 
the present purpose, is one which it has been, for many 
reasons, a pleasure to make. But the tendency of which 
Mr Maurice is an attractive exponent, found expression in 
others also whose statements were less attractively reverent, 
whilst they tended far more certainly,and far more completely, 
to explain away, as a mistake, the Church’s faith in the 
unique fact of the sacrifice of Christ. This form of thought 
is represented, significantly enough, in the essay upon 
Atonement which forms part of the commentary of the late 
Master of Balliol upon the Epistle to the Romans. Nothing, 
perhaps, represents quite so directly what Dr Dale was 
anxious to fight against, as this essay. And even apart 
from Dr Dale, it is a fair illustration of a strain of thought 
which has had, and still has, no small place, not so much in 
formal theology, as in the general instinct of a large part of 
Christian society. 

Professor Jowett, like Dr Dale, is to be understood in 
the light of what he is anxious to oppose. He is writing 
against a logical theory of atonement,. rigid, hard, and 
technical, which would understand it as wholly transactional, 
and wholly substitutional. “God is represented as angry 
with us for what we never did; He is ready to inflict a 
disproportionate punishment on us for what we are; He is 
satisfied by the sufferings of His Son in our stead. The sin 
of Adam is first imputed to us; then the righteousness of 
Christ... . The death of Christ is also explained by the 
analogy of the ancient rite of sacrifice. He is a victim laid 
upon the altar to appease the wrath of God. The institu- 
tions and ceremonies of the Mosaical religion are applied 

1 Sermon XII. on ‘‘ Christ made Sin for us,” pp. 185-189, 


a 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 387 


to Him. He is further said to bear the infinite punishment 
of infinite sin. When He has suffered or paid the penalty, 
God is described as granting Him the salvation of mankind 
in return.”4 This is what he wishes—naturally enough—to 
repudiate. But he does not repudiate this, as we should 
have desired, as a perverted and misleading interpretation 
of sacrifice and atonement. Rather he assumes that 
sacrifice and atonement can have no proper interpretation 
but this; and desiring to repudiate this, he repudiates, in 
fact, the conceptions of sacrifice and atonement altogether. 
“The language of Sacrifice and Substitution”? is some- 
thing which is not so much to be explained aright as to be 
explained away. He labours not so much to give new life 
and depth to its meaning, as to show that men ought to 
look for life and depth elsewhere : for that these phrases are 
but transient figures ; living significance i is not to be pressed 
out of them. 

The completeness with which he identifies the whole 
Scriptural and Catholic phraseology with the sort of hard 
Calvinistic associations which we should most of us agree 
with him in disowning, is illustrated by his assumption that 
the conception of Christ as inclusively representing mankind, 
and of man as corporately identified with Christ—partakers 
of His Cross and His Resurrection—is incompatible with the 
conception of atoning sacrifice! “For one instance of the 
use of sacrificial language,” he writes, “five or six might be 
cited of the language of identity or communion, in which 
the believer is described as one with his Lord in all the 
stages of His life and death. But this language is really 
inconsistent with the other. For if Christ is one with the 
believer, he cannot be regarded strictly as a victim who 
takes his place.”® “St Paul says, ‘We thus judge that if 
One died, then all died, and He died for all, that they 
which live shall not henceforth live to themselves, but unto 
Him which died for them and rose again.’ But words like 
these are far indeed from expressing a doctrine of atone- 
ment or satisfaction.”* These astonishing statements 
show not only what it is that he really desires to oppose ; 
but also, and far more strangely, with what unreserved 
completeness he identifies, with that which he desires to 
oppose, the whole phraseology of atonement, satisfaction, 
and sacrifice. 

It will probably cost us some effort at the present time 
to realize the narrowness of the meaning which he attaches 


1 p. 547, 2nd ed. 1859, ? p. 559. ® p, 560. * p. 563. 


388 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


to these terms; and therewith perhaps also, to realize 
within what comparatively recent times it was reasonably 
possible that they should be supposed to be identified with 
such a meaning. But so long as this thing was reasonably 
possible, it may be admitted that there was great need of a 
solvent; and as such a solvent, the contribution of 
Professor Jowett may be justified. 

It is true, moreover, that in a more positive sense, the 
thought of Professor Jowett, and of those who agreed with 
him, was on wholly right lines, in so far as it insisted upon 
‘moralizing’ the doctrine, and upon a rational apprehension 
of it. A theological system that is technical only and not 
spiritual—a view of a doctrine which sees it only as a trans- 
action, without moral or mystical aspect—must be fatally 
wrong. Allinsistence upon arational and moral interpreta- 
tion of a doctrine which, as currently interpreted, had 
ceased to be moral or rational, is of permanent value. 
Here again, it is curious to see in a casual phrase, how 
completely Professor Jowett assumed that theology, as 
such, was other than moral; and therefore that his moral 
theory of atonement was an overthrow, rather than an 
interpretation, of dogmatic theology. “It is instructive,” 
he actually says, “to observe that there has always been 
an undercurrent in theology, the course of which has 
turned towards morality, and not away from it.”! Conceive 
it! an ‘undercurrent’ which has ‘not turned away from’ 
morality ! 

And further, it may be added that when, in the final page 
of his essay, he pleads for the living value of moral 
character, the direct result of personal nearness to Christ, 
as something both truer, and higher, than belief in a 
transactional atonement, and an_ unreally imputed 
righteousness, he is, alike in aim and in temper, really 
reflecting not a little of the discipline, the gentleness, the 
lofty aim, and the large-hearted tolerance of the Spirit— 
whom he desires to vindicate in argument because the echo 
of His presence is within his heart. 

To say this is, no doubt, to say much. But it is not to 
accept Prof. Jowett as an interpreter of theology. And, 
indeed, whatever there may be about his thought that is of 
beauty or value; it is, in respect of its negations, its 
attempts to evaporate away the vital facts, and vital faith, 
of Christianity, a strange exhibition of ineffectiveness, if 
not of perversity. The apparent assumption that Christ’s 


1 p. 569. 








ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 389 


‘parables’ are conterminous with His ‘teaching’; the divorce 
between His teaching and His history—of which the great 
culmination is the Cross—between, that is, His teaching by 
word and His teaching by action, or passion ; the antithesis 
between the Gospels and St Paul; the explaining away of 
all particular statements as figures of speech borrowed from 
the Old Testament ; and of the Old Testament, as if its 
relation of significance to the New rested on no divinely 
underlying truth, but could be paralleled by that of “the 
Iliad and Odyssey” to “the Platonic or Socratic philo- 
sophy ”: there_is, as we read, a wonderful sense of failure, 
and laboured impotence, about all this. We can, indeed, 
look back upon it now with a quiet appreciativeness which 
has in it more of wonder than of indignation; but in its 
time it was formidable enough. There was a real danger 
of its acceptance as atrue and enlightened exposition of 
Christian doctrine. And it is only in its reference to the 
peril of this mode of thought, seemingly enlightened but 
really latitudinarian, a mode of thought which would in 
the end have been solvent not only to the rigider Calvinism 
but to all definiteness and permanence of belief, that the 
value of Dr Dale’s work can be estimated rightly. 

In this reference Dr Dale had a work to do, and he 
has done it with effectiveness. The early chapters of his 
work are a careful study of Scripture, in some detail, in 
vindication of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, both as a 
fact objective and historical in itself, and also as ‘cardinal 
to the Christian faith and life. There are, no doubt, ex- 
pressions in these chapters which are open to criticism, 
more or less serious; and there are omissions, the most signi- 
ficant of which will be noticed presently. But in the main, 
the positive work of these chapters is, in reference to his 
immediate purpose, admirable. He has shown quite con- 
vincingly, that no conception of the work of Christ, or of 
the hope of Christians, is really compatible with the New 
Testament, which would sweep aside the fact, or minimize 
the transcendent significance, of the death on Calvary, 
regarded as the unique atoning sacrifice for the sins of 
mankind. He has shown that this atoning sacrifice is 
regarded, from one end of the New Testament to the other, 
as being the climax of the Incarnation, the central fact in 
the history of the world, the transformation of human 
possibility. This is the great strength of the book. 

It will be felt, however, that his argument is directed 
more and more exclusively against those who would wholly 


390 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


evaporate this fact; against a conception of the atonement 
which is merely ‘subjective’ He is strong against an ex- 
aggeration in the subjective direction. On the other hand 
he hardly attempts, and certainly does not attain, any 
adequate synthesis of the two diverging aspects, the 
objective and the subjective, the transactional and the 
moral. We go in vain to his pages for that deeper insight 
which would really mediate between, and ultimately recon- 
cile, the conflicting conceptions of truth. He is strong 
against a perilous exaggeration, in the sense of showing 
that it is untenable. But he is not strong, with that more 
valuable form of strength which would distinguish, in the 
view he opposes, what is exaggerated from what is true, 
and would give full place, and do full justice, to its truth. 
He is effective, therefore, to an important extent, as against 
Prof. Jowett. But he is far from effective in reference to 
those religiously inquiring minds, which, without being com- 
mitted to Prof. Jowett’s position, are asking, and must needs 
have, some rationale of the doctrine offered them, on which 
their intelligence can conscientiously rest. So far is he 
from doing justice to the truth of the moral theory, that 
he objects to the phrase ‘moral theory’ altogether. We 
may see what he means in speaking thus, and may 
sympathize largely with his meaning. But no such 
sympathy can make us feel it to be less than a disaster 
when he says, of the question with which Rom. vi. opens, 
that it “is a decisive proof that the Pauline conception of 
the relation between the death of Christ and the remission 
of sins is irreconcilable with the ‘moral theory’ of the 
atonement, whatever form that theory may assume,” » 

It is, all through, the vindication of the fact rather than 
the explanation of the fact, in which he is really strong. 
There are some very effective pages at the beginning of 
Lecture VII. in refutation of the suggestion that theologians 
invented the atonement!” “All this,’ Dr Dale well says, 
“is precisely the reverse of the truth. Theologians did 
not invent the idea of an objective atonement in order to 
complete the symmetry of their theological theories. They 
have invented theory after theory, in order to find a place 
for the idea. That the death of Christ is the ground on 
which sin is remitted, has been one of their chief diffi- 
culties. To explain it, they have been driven to the most 
monstrous and incredible speculations. Had they been 
able to deny it, their work would have been infinitely 


1 The Atonement, p. 244; the italics are mine. 2 Cp. Jowett’s essay, § 2, 


ae 








ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 391 


simplified.”! This distinction between the decisive clear- 
ness of the fact, and the comparative difficulty of its ex- © 
planation, constitutes a sort of comment upon Dr Dale’s 
own book. For it suggests at once the chief direction of 
criticism to which the book is open, and on the other hand 
also the real reason why, in spite of all such criticism, there 
still is an undying value in the book. 

If we press for a rationale of the atonement which our 
mind and conscience can apprehend, we are driven, I think, 
in the book to accept it in some such form as this: (a) 
Christ, being made sin for us, suffered, in our stead, the 
actual punishment of sin; (0) this constituted a ground 
on which the moral justice of God could, and did, forgive 
us our sins. 

Thus in reference to (a) he says: “ He was forsaken of the 
Father, and He died. His other sufferings were such as 
the innocent may endure in serving the sinful and the 
wretched. On the Cross He submitted to the actual 
penalty of sin.”? “It was a Vicarious Death. He died ‘for 
us, ‘for our sins, ‘in our stead.’ For the principle that we 
deserved to suffer was asserted in His sufferings, that it 
might not have to be asserted in ours. He was forsaken 
of God, that we might not have to be forsaken. He did 
not suffer that He might merely share with us the penalties 
of our sin, but that the penalties of our sin might be 
remitted.”* It does not seem to me unfair to compare 
with these statements of his own, the explanation which 
he gives elsewhere of the famous passage of Luther’s 
commentary on Gal. iii. 13. He says: “ No doubt this is 
popular rhetoric, and popular rhetoric of a very intense 
and fervent kind. But Luther’s rhetoric is only Luther's 
creed set on fire by imagination and passion. To take words 
like these as though they were a literal and scientific state- 
ment of what Luther believed about the death of Christ, 
would be to violate the most ordinary principles which 
must govern the interpretation of language. But he meant 
what he said, and the substance of the passage is this— 
Christ so assumed the penal responsibilities of mankind, 
that all who believe in Him are delivered from the 
penalties of sin. The law has inflicted on Him the 
sufferings, which but for His mercy would have been 
inflicted on us.”4 

When Dr Dale thinks of Christ as enduring “the actual 
penalty of sin,” the one definite thing which seems to be at 


1 p. 269. 2p. 424. 8 p. 433- * pp. 289, 290. 


392 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


the core of his thought is the great cry of desolation upon 
the Cross. This, it will be noticed, was the culminating 
thought in each of the two passages which have been 
quoted. To these may be added the following, “ Immedi- 
ately before His death He was forsaken of God. When we 
remember the original glory in which He dwelt with the 
Father, His faultless perfection, and His unbroken com- 
munion with the Father during His life on earth, this is a 
great and awful mystery. That sinful men, even though 
they have been transformed into saints, should sometimes 
lose the sense of the Divine presence and the Divine love 
is explicable, but how was it that He, the Son of God, was 
forsaken by the Father in the very crisis of His sufferings ? 
He Himself had anticipated this desertion with a fear 
which sometimes became terror. It seems not only 
possible but probable, and even more than probable, that 
the intense and immeasurable suffering which wrung from 
Him the cry, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken 
me?’ was the immediate cause of His death. On any 
hypothesis it accelerated His death.” 

In another context, speaking with rather tentative 
suggestiveness in a different direction, he says, “ How the 
Death of Christ effects the destruction of our sin, we may 
be unable to tell. Perhaps that great moral act by which 
Christ consented to lose the consciousness of the Father’s 
presence and love—an act different in kind from any to 
which holy beings, in their normal relation to God, can be 
called—rendered it possible for us to sink to that complete 
renunciation of self which is the condition of the perfect 
Christian life ; for that renunciation is also unique, and has 
no parallel in the normal development of a moral creature.” ? 

It is probable that any theory of atonement must find 
its culmination in this great cry. But a theory which 
asserts that Christ bore the ‘actual punishment’ of sin, 
and finds in this cry the one direct justification for such 
an assertion, seems to me to isolate the cry overmuch as 
distinct in kind from everything that had gone before; as 
a single glimpse into what is in itself inexplicable, and 
yet as the only direct explanation of what atonement 
means. 

But we pass to (0) the second thought, that this enduring 
by Christ of the punishment of sin constitutes a reason 
why God can and does ‘forgive’ us. This seems to be 
asserted by Dr Dale in what is, after all, a quantitative or 


1 p, 360. 2 Dp. 429. 


Se 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 393 


equational form. “Christ is the ‘Propitiation for our 
sins’; and therefore, He has allayed the Divine anger, so 
that God, for His sake, is willing to forgive us.”1 “Ifthe 
punishment of sin is a Divine act .... it would appear 
that, if in any case the penalties of sin are remitted, some 
other Divine act of at least equal intensity, and in which 
the ill desert of sin is expressed with at least equal energy, 
must take its place.”* “If God does not assert the 
principle that sin deserves punishment by punishing it, 
He must assert that principle in some other way. Some 
Divine act is required which shall have all the moral 
worth and significance of the act by which the penalties 
of sin would have been inflicted on the sinner. The 
Christian atonement is the fulfilment of that necessity.” 
“When the heart is shaken by fears of future judgment and 
‘the wrath to come,’ a vivid apprehension of the Death of 
Christ, as the voluntary death of the Moral Ruler and 
Judge of the human race, will at once inspire perfect peace. 
Without further explanation, the conscience will grasp the 
assurance that since He has suffered, to whom it belonged 
to inflict suffering, it must be possible for Him to grant 
remission of sins.”* “ His hostility to our sins has received 
adequate expression in the Death of Christ, and now He is 
ready to confer on us the remission of sins for Christ’s sake. 
The remission of sins .... brings to the man who has 
received it a sure and permanent escape from the hostility 
and the wrath of God.”®> Some of the expressions ‘in these 
passages are particularly unfortunate. They provoke the 
query, which is hardly under the circumstances an unfair 
one,—May I, if my child is shamefully wicked, ‘forgive’ 
him, provided that, as an adequate expression of ‘ hostility,’ 
I cut off my own finger first ? 

Elsewhere Dr Dale writes, “If we ask in what sense 
He effected this reconciliation, the reply is contained in 
the words which follow—‘ ot tmputing their trespasses 
unto them ....’ If we further ask what relation there is 
between Christ and the non-imputation to mankind of 
those trespasses by which God’s righteous condemnation 
had been merited, the reply to this further question is 
given in the boldest representation of Christ’s redemptive 
work to be found in the New Testament: God ‘made Him 
to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made 
the righteousness of God in Him.’ This was the ultimate 
foundation of the Apostle’s ministry, and the ground on — 


* ps 355» ® p. 391. ® p. 391-2. * p. 394. ® p. 346. 


394 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


which in Christ’s stead, and as Christ’s ambassador, he 
could entreat men to be reconciled to God. God reconciles 
us to Himself, according to St Paul, not in the first 
instance by delivering us from sin, but by not imputing 
our sins to us: the reconciliation is primarily, not the re- 
moval of our hostility to God, but the cessation of God’s 
hostility to us. The ground ‘of this reconciliation lies in 
the fact that God made Christ to be sin for us, and its 
ultimate result is that we are made the righteousness of 
God in Him.”} 

Now I am quite unable to acquiesce in the sense which 
in these chapters is put upon the words punishment 
and forgiveness; for punishment remains as retaliatory 
infliction from without by another; and forgiveness as 
simply remission, or non-infliction, of penalties; and I 
doubt the possibility of any rational explanation of atone- 
ment while this meaning for the two words is assumed. 
But the most fatal flaw in Dr Dale’s exposition, regarded 
as a rationale of atonement, lies in this—that he has 
wholly omitted all reference to the presence, or work of 
the Holy Spirit. He has, in fact, essayed the impossible 
task of explaining how the atonement affects ‘me’ at 
a point, and upon a hypothesis, on which it does mot affect 
me. He stops short of Pentecost ; and short of Pentecost 
tries to show how I am included in the ‘forgiveness’ of 
God. But short of Pentecost ‘I’ am not so included. 
I am not forgiven—apart from the Spirit of Christ. I 
am not forgiven through the Spirit—apart from His 
operation within myself. It is not. the old unchanged 
‘I,’ who am simply, for the sake of an equivalent, let go 
unpunished. But the old ‘I, brought at first by Divine 
grace within the region of forgiveness, am therein more 
and more progressively changed, till my forgiveness is 
consummated in infinite love. And this love is the love 
of the righteousness and of the truth, as directly as of the 
mercy of God. For righteousness and truth and wisdom 
and power and mercy and love are one. 

The crucial point, then, after all, is Dr Dale’s omission. 
And the crucial illustration of this is his exposition of 
atonement from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. So 
exclusively do the thoughts of punishment, and Christ’s 
death as a bearing of punishment, monopolize his mind, 
that he actually expounds the doctrinal argument of the 
epistle, as though it finally closed with the close of chapter 


1 p. 262-3. 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 395 


vii. The 8th chapter, the grand culmination, the crown- 
ing glory of St Paul’s exposition, is treated as though 
it had never been written at all; or, at most, as though it 
belonged to an utterly different subject, and had no 
relevance to the atonement whatever. There is absolutely 
not a hint of its existence. To those who believe 
that the 8th chapter is at once the climax of all that 
has gone before, and the indispensable key to any true 
insight into the rationale of the whole, as a whole; 
this blank ignoring of its very existence is the most 
curious illustration that could be conceived of the limited- 
ness, or, to speak quite frankly, the failure, of Dr Dale’s 
explanatory work. 

I am quite aware that I have drawn my statement of 
Dr Dale’s theory almost wholly from his first nine lectures ; 
and that in the tenth, while there are emphatic passages 
which repeat the position of the nine, there are passages 
which belong to a different strain of thought. But while 
sincerely welcoming all that he there says as to the 
relation of Christ, as the Eternal Son, to the human race, 
and as to our ultimate holiness in Him, I must still say 
that these things seem to me to belong to another con- 
ception of the atonement, which is not the conception of 
his book. If they are, as they seem to me to be, in- 
consistent elements, they are inconsistencies for which we 
may well be altogether grateful. The volume is much the 
richer for them. For they bear their fragrant witness to 
a larger and a deeper truth than is properly included 
within the logic of the previous theory. 

In conclusion, it seems to me just to say these two 
things. First, that whilst Dr Dale had a work to do 
in stemming a tide of thought that was dangerously 
latitudinarian, it must nevertheless be admitted that there 
was something really retrograde, as well as loyally con- 
servative, in his own work. Indeed if, as years go by, 
nothing more could be said in explanation of the moral 
righteousness of the atonement than he has succeeded 
in saying, it is impossible not to feel some doubt whether 
belief in the atonement, even as fact, could be, on any 
large scale, ultimately maintained. On the other hand, 
so great is the value of his vindication of the fact, and 
so profound and so grateful is the response of the Christian 
consciousness thereto, as long as the fact is presented in 
any form whatever in which it can even seem to justify 
itself or to be intelligible (and the apprehension of the 


396 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


heart herein is apt to be far wider and more reasonable 
than the theories by which it struggles to explain itself) ; 
that Dr Dale’s work, after all, has stood, and will stand, 
as a real and solid contribution to the faith and goodness 
of his own generation, 


In passing from Prot. Jowett and Dr Dale to Dr 
Macleod Campbell, we are, to a certain extent, going 
backwards, as far as the strict order of dates is concerned. 
Yet this order seems to be more convenient, inasmuch as 
Dr Macleod Campbell’s thought, however much it may 
be open at some points to criticism, appears to be greatly 
in advance, alike in philosophical grasp and in theological 
insight, of the other two. And the order may find, 
perhaps, some further justification in the fact’ that most 
English readers of this generation are probably first, and 
most, familiar with Dr Dale. It must be owned that 
Dr Macleod Campbell is not an attractive writer. He 
is constantly prolix and difficult in style. Too often, 
indeed, this is simply a literary defect. But it is also 
connected with the largeness of a thought which is apt to 
be too many-sided for its language. If he confined him- 
self stringently to the logic of the one thought instantly 
in hand, his style would be often far clearer. But the real 
thought would be less rich. What he would have pruned 
away would not have been merely superfluous. It would 
have contained many germs of real thought, incidental 
touches upon other, more or less relevant, aspects of truth. 
Still, for practical purposes these things cumber, even 
while in a sense they enlarge, the immediate thought. 

We need not ask what occasions the writings of Dr 
Macleod Campbell. He himself supplies his own back- 
ground, And very interesting is the representation which 
his pages contain both of Luther, and of the earlier and 
later Calvinism. He is anything but hostile. He writes 
with respect and sympathy of all these. And yet he 
burns to correct the untruths in their logic which are so 
transparently plain to the insight of his heart. He is 
touching in his insistence upon the Fatherhood of God as 
the fundamental truth of life, and the revelation of the truly 
filial relation in Christ,—“that spiritual relation to Christ 
in the light of which we can alone hear and respond to the 
call to follow God as dear children.” He is clear that the 


1 The Nature of the Atonement, p. 366 (314). The references are to the 


a 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 397 


root cause of the atonement is not the anger, but the love 
of God. “An atonement to make God gracious, to move 
Him to compassion, to turn His heart toward those from 
whom sin had alienated His love, it would, indeed, be 
difficult to believe in; for, if it were needed, it would be 
impossible. To awaken to the sense of the need of such 
an atonement, would certainly be to awaken to utter and 
absolute despair. But the scriptures do not speak of such 
an atonement ; for they do not represent the love of God 
to man as the effect, and the atonement of Christ as the 
cause, but—just the contrary—they represent the love of 
God as the cause, and the atonement as the effect. ‘God 
so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in Him, might not perish, but 
have everlasting life.’”1 He is interesting in his protest 
against a conception of atonement, the core of which is 
amount of suffering. “What I have felt—and the more I 
consider it, feel the more—is surprise that the atoning 
element in the sufferings pictured, has been to their 
minds sufferings as sufferings, the pain and agony as pain 
and agony .... my surprise is, zo¢ that, to men believing 
the sufferings contemplated to be strictly penal, the pain 
as pain should be the chief object of attention, being indeed 
that for which alone, on this view, a necessity existed ; but 
my surprise is, that these sufferings being contemplated as 
an atonement for sin, the holiness and love seen taking the 
form of suffering should not be recognized as the atoning 
elements—the very essence and adequacy of the sacrifice 
for sin presented to our faith.” ? 

He is suggestive again in his tentative definition of 
forgiveness. “Forgiveness—that is, love to an enemy 
surviving his enmity, and which, notwithstanding his 
enmity, can act towards him for his good ; this we must be 
able to believe to be in God towards us, in order that we 
may be able to believe in the atonement.... If we 
could ourselves make an atonement for our sins .... then 
such an atonement might be thought of as preceding 
forgiveness, and the cause of it. But if God provides the 
atonement, then forgiveness must precede atonement; and 
the atonement must be the form of the manifestation of 
the forgiving love of God, not its cause.”* And he is 
suggestive in his protest against the ordinary sense of the 


— edition, published 1867. Those in brackets are to the sixth edition, 
1886. 


1 p, 20 (17). 2 p. 116 (99, 100). 3 p. 18 (15, 16). 


398 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


word punishment as used of the suffering of Christ; “it 
seems to me impossible to contemplate the agony of 
. holiness and love in the realization of the evil of sin and of 
the misery of sinners, as penal suffering. Let my reader 
endeavour to realize the thought. The sufferer suffers 
what he suffers just through seeing sin and sinners with 
God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. 
Is such suffering a punishment? Is God, in causing such a 
divine experience in humanity, inflicting a punishment? 
There can be but one answer. ... I find myself shut up 
to the conclusion, that while Christ suffered for our sins as 
an atoning sacrifice, what He suffered was not—because 
from its nature it could not be—a punishment.”! As to 
this last point we may doubt, not whether Dr Macleod 
Campbell is essentially right, but whether he is quite wise 
in simply rejecting the word. ‘Punishment’ need not 
simply mean retributive vengeance. To deny that our 
Lord’s sufferings were zu this sense penal is one thing. 
But it is another and more doubtful matter, to deny that 
they can be called penal in any sense at all. 

What, then, is the real character of the atonement? Dr 
Macleod Campbell’s answer will appear sufficiently from a 
comparison of the following passages. It is “the living 
manifestation of perfect sympathy in the Father's condem- 
nation of sin.”* “T have already urged the impossibility of 
regarding as penal the sorrows of holy love endured in 
realizing our sin and misery.’* “The distinction between 
penal sufferings endured in meeting a demand of divine 
justice, and sufferings which are themselves the expression 
of the divine mind regarding our sins, and a mantfestation by 
the Son of what our sins are to the Fathers heart, is indeed 
very broad.”* “What a vindicating of the divine name, 
and of the character of the lawgiver, are the sufferings 
now contemplated, considered as themselves the manifesta- 
tion in humanity of what our sins are to God, compared to 
that to which they are reduced if conceived of as a punish- 
ment inflicted by God!”5 

“That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards 
man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the 
Son’s dealing with the Father in relation to our sins, take 
the form of a perfect confession of our sins. This confession 


1 p. 117 (101). 
? p. 132 (113). The italics in this and the three following quotations are 
mine. 


% p. 133 (114). * p. 133 (114). 5 p. 134 (115). 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 399 


as to its own nature must have been a perfect Amen in 
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” } 
“ That response has all the elements of a perfect repentance 
in humanity for all the sin of man,—a perfect sorrow—a 
perfect contrition—all the elements of such a repentance, 
and that in absolute perfection, all—excepting the personal 
consciousness of sin;—and by that perfect response in Amen 
to the mind of God in relation to sin is the wrath of God 
rightly met, and that is accorded to divine justice which 
is its due, and could alone satisfy it. In contending 
‘that sin must be punished with an infinite punishment,’ 
President Edwards says? that ‘God could not be just to 
Himself, without this vindication, unless there could be 
such a thing as a repentance, humiliation and sorrow for 
this (viz. sin) proportionable to the greatness of the 
majesty despised’—for that there must needs be ‘either 
an equivalent punishment or an equivalent sorrow and 
repentance’—‘ so,’ he proceeds, ‘sin must be punished with 
an infinite punishment, thus assuming that the alternative 
of ‘an equivalent sorrow and repentance’ was out of the 
question... . Either of these courses should be regarded 
by Edwards as equally securing the vindication of the 
majesty and justice of God in pardoning sin. But the 
latter equivalent, which also is surely the higher and more 
excellent, being a moral and spiritual satisfaction, was, as 
we have now seen, of necessity present in Christ’s dealing 
with the Father on our behalf”? “A condemnation and 
confession of sin in humanity which should be a real Amen 
to the divine condemnation of sin, and commensurate with 
its evil and God’s wrath against it, only became possible 
through the incarnation of the Son of God. But the 
incarnation of the Son of God not only made possible such 
a moral and spiritual expiation for sin as that of which the 
thought thus visited the mind of Edwards, but indeed 
caused that it must be.”* “There is much less spiritual 
apprehension necessary to the faith that God punishes sin, 
than to the faith that our sins do truly grieve God. There- 
fore, men more easily believe that Christ’s sufferings show 
how God can punish sin, than that these sufferings are the 
divine feelings in relation to sin, made visible to us by 
being present in suffering flesh. Yet, however the former 
may terrify, the latter alone can purify.” 5 
“We are now able to realize that the suffering we con- 
1 p. 135 (116, 117). 2 Satisfaction for Sin, ch. 11. 1-3. 
® p. 137 (117-8). * p. 138 (119). > p. 140 (121). 


400 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


template is divine, while it is human; and that God is 
revealed zm zt and not merely in connection with it; God’s 
righteousness and condemnation of sin, being in the suffer- 
ing, and not merely what demands it,—God’s love also 
being in the suffering, and not merely what submits to it. 
Christ’s suffering being thus to us a form which the divine 
life in Christ took in connection with the circumstances in 
which He was placed, and not a penal infliction, coming on 
Him as from without, such words as‘ He made His soul an 
offering for sin’—‘He put away sin by the sacrifice of 
Himself ’—‘ By Himself He purged our sins, grow full of 
light: and the connection between what He zs who makes 
atonement, and the atonement which He makes, reveals 
itself in a far other way than as men have spoken of the 
Divinity of the Saviour, regarding it either as a strength to 
endure infinite penal suffering, or a dignity to give adequacy 
of value to any measure of penal suffering however small. 
Not in these ways but in a far other way, is the person of 
Christ brought before us now as fixing attention upon the 
divine mind in humanity as that which alone could suffer, 
and which did suffer sufferings of a nature and virtue to 
purge our sins. By the word of His power all else was 
accomplished, by Himself He purged our sins—by the virtue 
that ts in what He zs; and thus is the atonement not only 
what was rendered possible by the incarnation, but itself a 
development of the incarnation.”! “The divine rightecus- 
ness in Christ appearing on the part of man, and in 
humanity, met the divine righteousness in God condemning 
man’s sin, by the true and righteous confession of its 
sinfulness uttered in humanity, and righteousness as in 
God was satisfied, and demanded no more than righteous- 
ness as in Christ thus presented.” “That due repentance 
for sin, could such repentance indeed be, would expiate 
guilt, there is a strong testimony in the human heart, and 
so the first attempt at peace with God is an attempt at 
repentance,—which attempt, indeed, becomes less and less 
hopeful, the longer and the more earnestly and honestly it 
is persevered in,—but this, not because it comes to be felt 
that a true repentance would be rejected even if attained, 
but because its attainment is despaired of... .”3 “We 
feel that such a repentance as we are supposing (ze a 
repentance quite ideally and impossibly perfect) would be 
the true and proper satisfaction to offended justice, and that 
there would be more atoning worth in one tear of the true 


1 p, 141-2 (122). 2p. 143 (123). 3 p. 144 (124). 


EE ee a pe ee 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 401 


and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past would 
awaken in this now holy spirit, than in endless ages of 
penal woe.”! “In proportion as-it is seen that that which 
expiates sin must be something that meets a demand of 
the divine righteousness, the superiority of a moral and 
spiritual atonement, consisting in the right response from 
humanity to the divine mind in relation to sin, becomes 
clear. But that superiority is surely rendered still more 
unequivocal when, from the conception of God as the 
righteous ruler, we ascend to that of God as the Father of 
spirits. It is then that we fully realize that there is no real 
fitness to atone for sin in penal sufferings, whether endured 
by ourselves or by another for us. Most clearly to the 
Father’s feelings such sufferings would be no atonement; 
and yet are not these the feelings which call for an atone- 
ment,—is it not to them that expiation is most righteously 
due?”? “ What I thus labour to impress on the mind of my 
reader is, that the necessity for the atonement which we 
are contemplating was moral and spiritual, arising out of 
our relation to God as the Father of spirits ; and not merely 
legal, arising out of our being under the law.” 3 

So he speaks of “the deep and fundamental distinction 
between the conception of Christ’s enduring as a substitute 
the penalty of sin, and Christ’s making in humanity the due 
moral and spiritual atonement for sin.”* “No doubt the 
perfect response from humanity to the divine mind in 
relation to our sins, which has been in Christ’s confession of 
our sins before the Father, has been the due and proper ex- 
piation for that sin,—an expiation infinitely more glorifying 
to the law of God, than any penal suffering could be; but 
that confession, as it would not have been at all, but in con- 
nection with that intercession for the transgressors which 
laid hold of the divine mercy on our behalf, so neither would 
it have been the suitable and adequate atonement for our 
sin apart from its fitness to be reproduced zm us, and the 
contemplated result of its being so reproduced .... here 
was the highest righteousness, the divine righteousness in 
humanity: but that righteousness could never have been 
accounted of in our favour, or be recognised as ‘ours’ 
apart from our capacity of partaking in it; that is to say, 
apart from its being a righteousness in humanity, and, 
therefore, for all partaking in humanity.”> “If the eternal 
life given to us in Christ is that divine life in humanity in 

1p. 145-6 (125). 2 p. 184 (158). 3 p. 187 (160-1). 
* p. 315 (270). ® p. 331-2 (284). 
2C 


402 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


which Christ made atonement for our sins, then the connec- 
tion between the atonement and our participation in the life 
of Christ is not arbitrary but natural.”! “No result refer- 
able to simple Almightiness could be the same glory. 
That God should, by a miracle, change a rebellious child 
into a loving child, would be no such glory to God as that 
the knowledge of the fatherliness rebelled against should, 
by virtue of the excellence inherent in that fatherliness, 
accomplish this result. ‘We love Him because He first 
loved us.’ The power to quicken love in us is here ascribed 
to the love with which God regards us, considered simply 
as love,” ? 

Extracts such as these may be left to speak for them- 
selves. To me it seems difficult to estimate too highly the 
debt which Christian thought owes to that reverent spirit 
whose insight has expressed itself in them. Nevertheless, 
it will:really further our purpose to add some criticisms 
upon the book as it stands. Perhaps the leading criticism 
will be this: Dr Macleod Campbell appears to me to have 
discerned with more complete success the nature of the 
relation of Christ to God, than that of the relation of men 
to Christ. The identification of Christ with humanity, the 
‘recapitulation’ of humanity in Christ, are aspects of truth 
which require to be dwelt upon with more emphasis, and 
perhaps with a more daring simplicity. I do not, of course, 
mean that this side of the truth is absent from his mind. 
Here, for instance, are a few passages which directly deal 
with it. “We are prepared, as to the prospective aspect of 
the atonement, to find that the perfect righteousness of the 
Son of God in humanity is ztse/f the gift of God to us in 
Christ—to be ours as Christ is ours,—to be partaken in as 
He is partaken in,—to be our life as He is our life: instead 
of its being, as has been held, ours by imputation,—precious 
to us and our salvation, not in respect of what is inherent 
in it, but in respect of that to which it confers a legal title.” 
“ Abstractly considered, and viewed simply in itself, the 
divine righteousness that is in Christ must be recognized 
as a higher gift than any benefit it can be supposed to pur- 
chase.”* The honour done to God in humanity is “the 
revelation of an inestimable preciousness that was hidden 
in humanity . . the revealer of the Father is also the 
revealer of man, who was made in God’s image... 
humanity had this capacity only relatively, that is, as dwelt 
in by the Son of God; and, therefore, there was in the 


? p. xv (xviii), 7 p. 340 (22) 8 p. 154 (132, 3).  * p. 154 (133) 


—— 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 403 


righteousness of Christ in humanity no promise for 
humanity apart from the Son of God’s having power over 
all flesh to impart eternal life.”+ “ What it is to be a man, 
what we possess in humanity, we never know until we see 
humanity in Him who through the eternal Spirit offered 
Himself without spot to God.”* “*‘ Our fellowship is with 
the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.’ ‘Father’ and 
‘Son’ here do more than indicate persons: they indicate 
that in these persons with which the fellowship is ex- 
perienced. Eternal life is to the apostle a light in which 
the mind of fatherliness in the Father, and the mind of 
sonship in the Son, are apprehended and rejoiced in..... 
To me it appears that the temptation to stop short of the 
light that shines to us in the communion of the Son with 
the Father in humanity is strong, and greatly prevails. 
But this light is the very light of life to us; for this com- 
munion is the gift of the Father to us in the Son.”? 
“What is thus offered on our behalf is so offered by the 
Son and so accepted by the Father, entirely with the pro- 
spective purpose that it is to be reproduced in us. The 
expiatory confession of our sins which we have been con- 
templating is to be shared in by ourselves: to accept it on 
our behalf was to accept it as that mind in relation to sin 
in the fellowship of which we are to come to God.”* “Our 
faith is, in truth, the Amen of our individual spirits, to 
that deep, multiform, all-embracing, harmonious Amen of 
humanity, in the person of the Son of God, to the mind 
and heart of the Father in relation to man,—the divine 
wrath and the divine mercy, which is the atonement. This 
Amen of the individual, in which faith utters itself towards 
God, gives glory to God according to the glory which He 
has in Christ; therefore does faith justify. ... The 
Amen of the individual human spirit to the Amen of the 
Son to the mind of the Father in relation to man, is saving 
faith—true righteousness; being the living action, and true 
and right movement of the spirit of the individual man, in 
the light of eternal life.” ® 

And yet, while he labours to emphasize our relation to 
Christ, he seems always to stop short, both in phrase and 
in thought, of that conception of our identification with 
Christ, which is at once the higher, the more compre- 
hensive, and the more scriptural, conception. His thought 
is hampered, on the one hand, by the phrase justifying 

4 Ps 160 (138). 2 p. 170 (147). ® p. 172-3 (148-9). 

P- 177 (153). * p. 225-6 (194, 5). 


404 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


faith, and all its conventional associations and claims in 
that atmosphere in which it has most been reverenced 
(with strange disproportion) as a thing abstract and apart: 
and on the other hand, by his comparatively imperfect 
familiarity with that conception and experience which 
may be said to be the most characteristic conception and 
experience of the historic Church, that is to say, its 
intense and instinctive realization of identity of spirit, in 
the life of sacramental communion, with the very Spirit 
of the Sacrifice of the crucified Christ. Even, then, when 
his thought is upon our relation to Christ, he is con- 
sciously or unconsciously separating us overmuch from 
Christ. The emphasis with which he speaks of Christ’s 
righteousness as the ‘divine’ life in Christ when the 
equally true, and more characteristic, thought would be 
that it was a realization of ‘human’ righteousness, already 
in some faint degree lends itself to this. The phrase 
touches His contrast rather than His identity with 
ourselves. But we feel the same thing more clearly in 
the form of some of Dr Macleod Campbell’s most favourite 
phrases. Two of them are ‘the Son’s dealing with the 
Father in relation to our sins’; and the description of this 
as taking ‘the form of a perfect confession of our sins.’ 
These occur together in the sentence quoted above from p 
135 (116,117). Both phrases are characteristic, and both 
are misleading. If Christ was humanity perfectly penitent, 
humanity perfectly righteous, humanity therefore in perfect 
accord with, and response to, the very essential character 
of Deity, it is both inadequate and unfortunate to describe 
this, His re-identification of humanity with holiness by what 
He Himself was, as His ‘dealing with the Father in rela- 
tion to’ us. Yet this ‘dealing with’ is one of Dr Macleod 
Campbell’s regularly recurring phrases.” 

Again to summarize Christ’s atonement on Calvary as 
His expiatory confession of our sins, is to use a phrase 
which at once, and inevitably, distinguishes Him from us. 
. The phrase is really almost a disastrous one. It seems, to 
our natural thought, at once so easy and so irrelevant—so 
irrelevant because so easy—to confess the sins of other 
people ; that a theory of the atonement which is content to 
describe itself in this phrase ‘Christ’s confession of our sins’ 
has no real hope of commending itself to the conscience of 

1 #.g., on pp. 141-3, etc. (132 fol.). 


2 See pp. 135, 138, 204, 287, 288, 289, 294, etc. (116, 117, 120, 176, 183, 
246, 247, 250, 252; or 260, 264, 266, 269). 


at lh A Tie a EN 6 ats “ 








ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 405 


mankind. The phrase, we may say at once, does very im- 
perfect justice to the real thought of Dr Macleod Campbell. 
And yet it is his own most characteristic phrase. He quite 
certainly means by it much more than the words suggest. 
And he uses, occasionally, other phrases which come nearer 
to the fulness of his meaning. Thus, ‘a perfect repentance 
in humanity for all the sin of man—a perfect sorrow—a 
perfect contrition’; a ‘perfect response in Amen to the 
mind of God in relation to sin’; ‘a condemnation and 
confession of sin in humanity which should be a real Amen 
to the divine condemnation of sin, and commensurate with 
its evil and God’s wrath against it’;? ‘the divine mind in 
humanity which alone could suffer, and which did suffer 
sufferings of a nature and virtue to purge our sins’ ;® these 
are phrases which go far deeper, for they make absolutely 
clear that what is meant is (1) a perfect realization of 
penitence, with that complete self-identity at once with 
holiness and with sin-consciousness which is the impossible 
paradox of perfect penitence; and (2) a realization of 
penitence, that is, of holiness, in and by humanity. Yet 
again, and again, as the volume goes on, Dr Macleod 
Campbell is content to refer back to his own theory as 
though it were adequately summarized by the phrase ‘ His 
confession of our sins’:* so that we feel that it is not quite 
wholly the fault of Dr Dale that he is content to refer to 
the theory with a passing reference so inadequate as this, 
“Had He simply made a confession of sin in our name— 
the theory advocated by Dr Macleod Campbell in his very 
valuable treatise on the atonement—He would still have 
remained at a distance from the actual relation to God in 
which we were involved by sin.”® Utterly inadequate as 
this reference is, it nevertheless indicates a real blot. The 
identity of Christ with humanity, and of humanity with Christ, 
is not adequately conceived. ‘His confession of our sins 
before the Father, His ‘dealing with the Father in relation 
to our sins,’® are phrases which do wof rise to the truth that 
in Him ‘to confess’ was ‘to be.’ He ‘confessed the Father’ 
by deing the very manifestation of the Father to men. He 
confessed the sin of humanity by Jeng the very manifesta- 
tion of humanity, in its ideal reality of penitential holiness, 
before the Father. 


1 p. 137 (117, 8). 2 p. 138 (119). 3 p. 142 (122). 

‘ Cf. together pp. 135, 136, 152, 157, 158, 177, 178, 182, 183, 204, 287, 
288, 303, 308, 309, etc. (117, 126, 135-7, 150-3, 156-7, 169, 246-8, 260, 
264, 265). 5 Dale, On the Atonement, p. 424. 6 pp. 135, 136 (117). 


406 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


There is one passage in particular in which the lack of 
the simplicity of this conception is illustrated by the very 
attempts which he makes, incompletely as well as clumsily, 
to approach the result which this conception would at once 
have fully given. “In order,” he writes, “to the complete- 
ness of the parallel between the hypothetical case” (ze, the 
imagined case of a single man who had committed all the 
sin of the world and had also reached the ideal righteous- 
ness of penitence), “and the constitution of things in Christ 
which the Gospel reveals, Christ’s confession of our sin must 
be seen in connection with our relation to the righteousness 
of Christ, and the sin confessed, and the righteousness 
in which it is confessed, be seen as if they were in the same 
person—being both in humanity; though the sin really 
exists only in humanity as in us, and used in rebellion by 
us rebels, and the righteousness only in humanity as in 
Christ, ‘who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself 
without spot to God”! This antithesis between His 
humanity and ours, and the ‘as if’ which it involves, 
illustrate the hesitation of his thought upon this side, and 
the difficulties which result. 

But the attenuation of his theory, which in its real 
completeness is a very grand one, down to the one mis- 
leading word ‘confession, is not the only result which 
follows from an undue assumption of distinction and 
antithesis between Christ and ourselves. It is probably, at 
bottom, the same thing which leads Dr Macleod Campbell to 
give explanations of Christ’s mental anguish in the Passion, 
such as may seem to match his individual consciousness, as a 
holy man suffering, rather than what may be called His 
representative consciousness, as humanity realizing peniten- 
tial holiness. In Himself, regarded as a separate individual, 
there could be, of course, no penitential heaviness at all. 
Therefore in Him, regarded only as a separate individual, 
whatever seems to approach towards such heaviness of 
spirit, must needs be explained from some wholly different 
side. This might, perhaps, in itself be enough to warn us 
that any explanation of the heaviness of spirit in the 
Passion, which looked to Him only in Himself by Himself, 
and not to Him as inclusive Humanity, bearing ‘man’s’ 
sin and consciousness in relation to sin, must necessarily, 
for that reason alone, be at fault. Yet this is the mistake 
which Dr Macleod Campbell appears to make. 

We may notice this in a subordinate way, in the ex- 


1 p. 158 (136). 


—_—=- ———— ~ 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 407 


aggerated prominence which he gives, in commenting on 
the‘ shame’ of the cross, to the extreme sensitiveness felt, by 
loving goodness, to an unloving response. ‘“ Therefore our 
Lord, the true brother of every man, desired this response 
of heart from every man; and the refusal of it, the giving 
of contempt instead of favour, and scorn instead of that 
accord of true brotherhood which would have esteemed 
Him, as was due to Him, as ‘the chief among ten thousand, 
and altogether lovely,’ was as a death to that life which 
desired the favour thus denied.”! The whole thought is a 
striking one. It is only when the thought is pressed as if 
it were the special meaning of the shame of the cross, that 
it is felt not as adding light, but rather as minimizing, if 
not explaining away. 

These same things are true, on a far more striking scale, 
when we come to his explanation of the great cry on the 
cross. If this is a touchstone by which theories of atone- 
ment are tried, we shall have to admit that there must at 
least be something defective in the theory of Dr Macleod 
Campbell. He is indeed the extreme opposite to Dr Dale. 
Dr Dale made it the actual infliction of the retributive 
punishment due to sin. Against this Dr Macleod Campbell 
utterly protests. So far as he is protesting against this, we 
may sympathize with him without reserve. But when we 
come to his positive explanation, it is impossible not to feel 
that he has not so much explained the cry, as explained it 
away. What are the facts? The climax of the crucifixion, 
on the side of physical outwardness, is the darkness of the 
three hours. The sole interpretation of the inwardness 
of the darkness is in that cry, the most wonderful in the 
history of the world. The cry is itself a cry of pleading 
remonstrance. Because of what? JBecause of the sense 
of being forsaken of God. By no possibility can we say 
less than this. What, then, is at the heart of Dr Macleod 
Campbell’s explanation, as the basal fact by which all 
interpretation must be characterized? Strange to say, it is 
this—that the suffering Christ never felt Himself forsaken 
at all. It is not a question of a contrast drawn between an 
absolute reality, and a temporary consciousness, of forsaken- 
ness. It is not a question of why, or how far, or in what 
way, or with what meaning, the sense of being forsaken 
could enter into His consciousness. It is, in fact, a denial 
that anything of the kind did enter into His consciousness 
at all. 


? p. 269 (231). 


408 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


This result is reached partly by an illegitimate use of the 
historical origin of the words at the opening of the 22nd 
psalm. It is assumed, first, that the meaning of the words 
as used by the psalmist, is a measure of their meaning in 
the supreme moment of the sacrifice of the Crucified : and 
secondly, that, as used by the psalmist, they must be taken 
as merely part of the outward setting of an utterance whose 
whole inner essence is expression of unbroken trust. 
Therefore the cry on the cross, that one great utterance of 
desolation which illumines and interprets the darkness, is 
to be interpreted as an utterance—not of desolation but of 
unbroken trust. This is the method exegetically. And 
this exegetical method is corroborated, or rather perhaps 
is inspired, by a conviction of the inherent impossibility 
that there should be, in Him, any consciousness of desolation. 
So it is that the conclusion is confidently reached—a 
conclusion which appears directly to contradict the words 
of the cry themselves. “The character of this psalm as 
a whole is therefore quite unequivocal, viz., a dealing of the 
Father with Christ, in which the cup of man’s enmity is 
drunk by Him to its last drop, in the experience of 
absolute weakness—the true weakness of humanity realized, 
whereby scope is given for the trust of sonship towards the 
Father. . . . But trust in God, personal trust, is that of 
which the trial is most conspicuous as pervading the 
psalm—trust in utter weakness—trust in the midst of 
enemies—trust which the extremity of that weakness and 
the perfected enmity of these enemies tries to the utmost— 
trust which the Father permits to be thus tried ; but trust, 
the root of which in the Father’s favour has not been cut 
off, nor even touched by any act of the Father or expression 
of His face as if He were turned into an enemy,—as if He 
looked on the suppliant in wrath—as if He regarded 
Him as a sinner, imputed sinto Him. Not this, not the 
most distant approach to this.”4 He goes on to quote and 
italicize the following words, as expressly disallowing the 
idea of any obscuring of the Father’s face: “He hath not 
despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted ; mezther 
hath He hid His face from him”*; words which, as he 
claims, “leave no place even for that negative wrath... 
which ... has been set forth as a hiding of the Father’s 
face.” He disallows not only the fact of such aversion of 
countenance, but any approach whatever to any temporary 
experience or consciousness of being forsaken. “That we 

1 p. 280 (240). 2 verse 24. 


ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 409 


meet here an interruption of the continuity of that life 
which was in the consciousness of the Father’s favour, an 
exception to the experience of abiding in the Father’s love 
because keeping His commandments ... . of this, or any- 
thing in the most distant way suggestive of this, there is no 
trace,” 

These are very strong phrases. It is difficult to imagine 
that they can be really warranted in this form. Not ‘the 
most distant suggestion’ of any ‘exception’ to the ‘con- 
tinuity’ of the conscious ‘experience’ of abiding in the 
Father’s love: there is, in this, as in what he says of the 
darkness on p. 305 (262), a painful sense of unauthorized 
and almost wilful minimizing, such as, along with his use 
of the word ‘confession, has done much to discredit his 
theory as a whole, and to prevent it from exercising all 
the influence over thought which, in its deeper aspects, 
it certainly deserves. : 

Once more I must suggest that all these difficulties 
would be modified by a stronger conception as to the 
representative, or rather the inclusive, completeness of the 
Humanity of Christ, and the nature of the directness of our 
relation to Him. And I must add that this conception 
would at once have been strengthened, had he realized 
beforehand the impossibility of explaining atonement in its 
personal relation to ourselves, apart from the doctrine of the 
Holy Ghost. He wholly lacks, or rather his exposition of 
atonement wholly lacks, any reference to that outpouring of 
the Spirit of Holiness, the very Spirit of the Incarnate and 
the Crucified, which zs our personal identification with 
Him, and therefore is alone the realization of the atone- 
ment within ourselves. It is one more instance, after all, of 
the impossible effort to expound the relation of Calvary to 
ourselves, otherwise than in and through exposition of 
Pentecost. 

Exposition of Pentecost involves further the Church and 
the Sacraments. It involves them both, of course, as 
spiritually rather than mechanically conceived. They are 
the methods of spiritual reality, not substitutes for it. 
But they are methods of divine appointment, and certainly 
not humanly dispensable. Had he been born and bred 
within the range of all that (as it were) instinctive con- 
ception and consciousness, in relation to sacramental 
communion, which characterizes the best and deepest 
tradition of the Catholic Church; had it been to him 


1p, 281 (241). 


410 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


Christ’s own method for the personal identification, in 
Spirit, of His mystical Body the Church, and of all her 
members, with the very atoning Sacrifice of Calvary; he 
could hardly, in expounding the rationale of atonement, 
have ignored so completely the relevance of all this side of 
Christian experience. How far he is in fact from an 
adequate conception of sacraments may be illustrated by 
the manner in which he goes out of his way, quite need- 
lessly and even (from a churchman’s point of view) quite 
unintelligently, to depreciate the conception of regeneration 
in baptism! His doctrine of atonement requires no 
reference to the Eucharist at all. 

The debt which Christian thought owes to Dr Macleod 
Campbell’s work is a very great one. And yet it seems, 
after all, that his comparative lack of wide popular accept- 
ance is intelligible: and, indeed, it would be impossible to 
most of us to accept his whole exposition, without reserve, 
as it stands. 


There are, no doubt, other books also which have made 
their real contribution to modern thought, and upon which 
it would be a pleasure to comment. But the examination 
of the treatises of Dr Macleod Campbell and Dr Dale may 
be sufficient to serve the practical purpose; and this 
chapter is already too long. I will therefore end only 
with a reference, brief but audacious, to the recent Hulsean 
Lectures of Archdeacon Wilson. They are full of fresh air, 
instinct with real and vigorous movement and life. They are 
alive, they are direct, they are stimulating, they are real. 
No one can read them without being braced as well as 
refreshed by them. None the less I cannot but think 
that he has minimized, to the point of explaining away, 
many elements in the stern teaching which is characteristic 
alike of the Old Testament and of the New, as to the 
depth of sin and the gravity of penitence, as to the import 
of death and the inherent necessity of sacrifice, and there- 
fore as to the true significance of Calvary in the regenera- 
tion of mankind. And yet, if I rightly understand him, 
I fancy that I can sympathize with every single thing 
which affirmatively he either means or desires. The view 
which has been taken in these pages seems to me to give a 
more vital, and a truer, place to some aspects of truth which 
loom large in the Gospel message, and yet to him are little 


1 p. 366-7 (314-5). 


~ Ee ee a 





ATONEMENT IN HISTORY 411 


more, if I do not misunderstand him, than misleading figures 
of speech. Yet my own view unites with his in setting 
aside all that is really material, or transactional, or un- 
worthy, in those interpretations whose crudeness or untruth 
we alike desire to correct; whilst I persuade myself that 
it realizes every element of his positive thought. This, 
then, is the effrontery of my audacity; that though, whilst 
rejoicing in his spirit, I am unable to accept his exposition 
as it stands, I do not see why he should not accept 
mine. I hardly dare think of the terms in which many 
people, in the position of the Archdeacon, would charac- 
terize this impertinence. What he will say of it I know 
not. And yet I think that he will judge it without a 
breach of that kindly tolerance of spirit, which is itself, 
perhaps, in some part responsible, if I have really ventured 
to say too much. 


Perhaps this chapter hardly needs a summarizing con- 
clusion. But I may end, as I began, with expressing a 
conviction that the true doctrine of the atonement, in the 
New Testament and in early Christian thought, and faith, 
and worship, is singularly free from those encrusting diffi- 
culties of false explanation, which have attached themselves 
to it in the course of ages; and for the sake of which it 
is so largely discredited by certain elements in modern 
thought, which, if they are foolishly careless about being 
orthodox, are nevertheless in themselves both robust and, 
in great measure, true. We do not want the New 
Testament itself to be rewritten in any particular, or in 
any particular explained away. We may well be suspicious 
of any theories, however naive or however confident, which 
are based upon the necessity of such a treatment. But 
none the less we may be convinced that interpretations 
of the New Testament which seem at first sight (from the 
modern point of view) to have been immemorial in the 
Church, are really nothing more than the gradual develop- 
ment of mistaken attempts at exegesis, which are natural 
(perhaps even necessary) stages in the growth of a full 
intelligence, but are themselves neither primitive nor 
scriptural. | 

It is upon Scripture that we take our stand; admitting 
no interpretation of Scripture as authoritative which 
cannot claim a consensus of clearly conscious faith and 
deliberate teaching, alike universal and continuous, through- 


412 ATONEMENT AND PERSONALITY 


out the history of the undivided Church. The authority 
of such a consensus, and the authority of Scripture—alike 
of the New Testament by itself, and (more strikingly still) 
of the New Testament as the fulfilment and illumination 
of the Old,—can indeed be pleaded, with a truth and force 
which are wholly irresistible, on behalf of the crucial im- 
portance of the Death, and Life through Death, of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, as an atoning sacrifice for the sin of 
the whole world. It cannot be pleaded on behalf of any 
one of those interpretative theories which have perplexed 
either ancient or modern thought. 

Once more let me repeat that this does not mean that 
the fact must—or can—be held apart from rationalizing 
interpretation. The fact could not, as unintelligible to 
reason, be held or believed at all. But the fact, though never 
wholly compassed by our intelligence, is never unintelligible. 
Reason can—and must—understand it. Reason can—and 
must—take cognizance of whatever has been said irration- 
ally in its explanation or defence. It is rational through 
and through ; and it is to be rationalized by the intelligent 
conscience of mankind. But it is a fact, the necessity of 
which, and the results of which, lie too far back in the very 
structure of human consciousness, the very possibility of 
human character, to admit of any rough and ready, or 
mathematical, or simple, or final, interpretation. The fact 
itself is eternal and immutable. The fact itself is the very 
centre of the Gospel message to a world of suffering and 
sin. But the understanding of it must develop pro- 
gressively; for it must seem to vary, while it grows in 
depth, with man’s deepening capacity for intelligence of 
God, and of himself. 


ea ee 


INDEX 


ABZALARD, 372-382; interpretation of 
justification and redemption, 375; 
letter to Heloissa, 377 sgg.; his 
limitation, 381. 

Adam, the first and the second, 88 sg¢., 
266, 267, 344, 357: 

‘* Amen,” the, 399, 403, 405. 

Analogies of Trinity, 170-176. 

‘*¢ Another,” 99, 100, 107, 227, 256, 
287. 

Anselm, St, 218, 367-372, see under 

Cur Deus Homo? 

Apostolic Fathers, 326-332. 

Asceticism, 148, 313. 

Athanasian Creed, the, 82. 

Athanasius, St, 325, 326, -349-365; 
relation of Logos, as Creator, to 
humanity, 344, 349, 351, 3523 
Logos incarnated to conquer death 
by dying, 354-3573; Logos inherent 
in humanity, 356-360; by the Spirit, 
which is His own, 360-364. 

Atonement, the essential problem, 74, 
110, III, 329, 350-353; presentment 
of, in the New Testament, 332-336; 
juridical imagery misleading, 80; 
illustration of a mother, 80, 122; the 
body the instrument of, 113, 266, 
267; asa transaction, 138, 218, 278, 
371, 386, 410; objective and sub- 
jective, 140 sgg., 281, 319-321; 
moral theory of, 143, 388, 390; 
lived upon in the Eucharist, 267 ; 
Christ is consummation of, 282-286 ; 
deeper down in human consciousness 





Atonement—continued, 
than any theories of it, 337, 369, 
370, 412; gradualness of misconcep- 
tions, 343, 348, 366, 411. 

Augustine, St, de fide et symbolo, 170; 
de Trinitate, 160, 171, 206. 


BALLIOL, late master of, 386-389. 

Baptism, as incorporation into Christ, 
260, 261, 265; as regeneration, 261, 
263. 

Baptismal formula, the, 182, 186. 

Baptismal rights, in relation to Laying 
on of hands, 263, 264. 

Barnabas, letter of, 329. - 

Bernard, St, 380-382. 

Body, the, the instrument of atonement, 
113, 266, 267; its consecration in 
atonement and Eucharist, 266, 267. 

Body and Spirit, 270, 271. 


CALVARY, only explicable through 
Pentecost, 151, 152, 281, 321, 322, 
382, 394, 409. 

Calvinism, 387, 396. 

Campbell, Dr Macleod, 396-410; on 
suffering, punishment, and forgive- 
ness, 397, 398; theory of atonement, 
398-402; inadequately represented 
by the word ‘‘ confession,” 404-406 ; 
criticism upon, 402-410; on the 
shame of the Cross, 406; on the Cry 
on the Cross, 407-409 ; omission of 
sacraments, 409. 

Cause to oneself, to be a, 224, 225. 

418 


414 


Christ, identically not generically God, 
82, 92, 279; inclusively not generi- 
cally man, 88 sgg., 92, 279; His 
human nature not impersonal, 93, 
94; not so much a dualism ‘‘ God 
and man” as a unity ‘‘God as 
man,” 95 sgg.; as Incarnate is 
never not Incarnate, 95, 97, 108; 
the revelation of Deity to man, 95, 
97, III, I12, 155, 167, 189, 192; 
the revelation of humanity to man, 
97, 98, 111, 282, 283; His human 
character the reflection of Another, 
99, 107, 193; His meditation and 
prayer, 101; His activity of obedience, 
102; the phrase ‘‘not of myself,” 
103-107 ; His death as the climax of 
obedience, 114, 116; His identifica- 
tion with man, and the point of view 
of sin, 128 ; His death the consumma- 
tion of penitence, 129, 130, 317; 
and therefore the triumph of inherent 
righteousness, 130, 132; (cf. St 
Athanasius, on the inherence of the 
Logos in humanity, 344-363;) the 
atonement is Himself, 47, 275, 276, 
282-286, 405; His presence con- 
tinuous through the Spirit, 156, 169, 
181, 194-197, 259, 264, 272, 281, 
282, 285; Baptism is incorporation 
into, 260, 261, 265; lived on by 
Christians in the Eucharist, 266 sgq¢. ; 
is the consummation of human per- 
sonality, 250, 252, 255, 272, 275, 
276, 282-286; 319-322; cf. 356-365. 

Christ Church, Dean of, 337. 

Church, the, is the Spirit, 259, 264, 
272, 281, 282; is Christ, 258, 250, 
261, 264, 272, 281, 282, 285. 

Clement of Rome, St, 326. 

Confirmation, 261-264. 

Contemplation, a stage towards love, 
146, 281. 

Conventional Christianity, 299 s¢q. 

Corporate conception of humanity, 65, 
87, 119, 124-126, 344, 345, 356-365, 
402. 

Cross, the Cry on the, 131, 134; Mr 
Maurice on, 386; Dr Dale on, 392; 
Dr Macleod Campbell on, 407-409. 





INDEX 


Cui servire regnare, 228. 

Cur Deus Homo? 367; less than 
Anselm’s real faith, 369; definition 
ofsin, 370; theory purely quantita- 
tive, 370, 371; commended by his 
saintliness, 371, 372. 

Cynicism, 302. 


DALE, Dr, 382-396 ; on punishment, 43 
on atonement as an objective reality, 
139; his strength, 386, 391, 396; his 
theory of atonement, 391-394; on 
the Cry on the Cross, 392 ; criticisms 
on, 393, 394-396; on Dr Macleod 
Campbell, 405. 

Dante, de Monarchia, 337. 

Death, the, of Christ, 133, 2803; as the 
climax of obedience, 114, 116; as 
the consummation of penitence, 129, 
130, 317; as the triumph of inherent 
righteousness, 130, 132, 329, 355- 

Diognetum, Epistola ad, 329-331, 336. 

Discipline, the proper meaning of punish- 
ment, II, 13, 23, 39, 40. 

Dualism, not to be predicated of Christ, 
96. 

Dying, experience of, 114, 293. 


EATING, the sacred significance of, 
267-271. 

Edwards, President, 399. 

Elijah, 289. 

Elisha’s seryant, 289. 

Epistola ad Diognetum, 329-331, 336. 

Equal choice between alternatives is 
not free will, 221 sgq. 

Equals, forgiveness between, 67-70. 

Equation theory of punishment, 10, 

Equation theory of Atonement, 370, 
371, 393- 

‘* Eternal Generation,” 211, 212. 

Eucharist, the, a living upon Atone- 
ment, 267, 273. 

Eusebius, 208, 210, 215. 

Experience, the only perfect knowledge, 
161, 317. 

Experience of dying, 114, 293. 


FATHER, Son, and Spirit, in what sense 
words of metaphor, 184, cf. 340. 
Filioque, the, 195. 


INDEX 


Flesh and Blood of Christ, represent 
His Humanity, 266 ; specially as the 
instrument of Atonement, 267. 

Forgiveness, as remission of penalty, 
49, 50, 394; or of debt, 370; Dr 
Macleod Campbell on, 397; in 
Christianity can only mean rightful 
forgiveness, 51, 60, 280; as ignoring 
of guilt, 53; what it really is—the 
embrace of righteous love, 55, 61, 
62, 71, 72, 279; correlative to for- 
giveableness, 56; not arbitrary nor 
optional, 57 ; on earth, is provisional, 
61, 62; towards a little child, 64-66 ; 
towards an equal, 67-70; with no 
reference to holiness, is pagan, not 
Christian, 72. 

Free Will, in what sense we possess 
it, 220 sgg.; is not equal choice 
between alternatives 221, sgg.; nor 
even to make one’s own, in doing 
things of any kind, 223 ; but to bea 
cause to oneself of what is right for 
the self, 225-228 ; a capacity, there- 
fore, of response, 226 ; whose climax 
is divine obedience, 228; perfected 
only in the Spirit of Christ, 233. 

Future, the, a form of present, 33. 


GENTLEMANLY, 258. 

God, the Unity of, 83, 154, 166; 
threefoldness within, 155, 164, 165; 
** mutual inclusiveness,” 157, cf. 169 ; 
the word ‘‘ Person” applied to, 158, 
160, 162, 178; relation of the Father 
and the Son, 185, 187, 208-215; 
perfectly revealed in Christ, 94, 111, 
155, 167, 189, 192; through the 
Spirit, 195 s¢q. 

Gradualness of misconceptions about 
the Atonement, 343, 348, 366, 411. 

Gregory of Nyssa, 366. 

Guilt, two sets of penal consequence 


upon, I7. 


HELL, 12, 15, 24. 

Heloissa, Abzlard to, 377-380. 

Hippolytus, on the Valentinians, 184 ; 
contra Noetum, 208, 209. 

History of doctrine, its drawbacks, 324. 


/ 





415 


Holiness, the essentia of perfect peni- 
tence, 38, 39, 41-46, 117, 278. 

Hooker, quoted, 84, 169, 206. 

Hulsean lectures, 410. 

Hiluman faculties, at their highest, 
coalesce in personal unity, 240, 245. 

Human justice inherently imperfect, 9; 
77: . 

Humanity, corporate solidarity of, 65, 


87, 119, 124-126, 344, 345, 356-365, 
402. 


“T,” 150 (cp. 31, 32, and 217), 249, 250, 
251, 252. 

Ideal, practical power of, 295, 298. 

Ignatius, St, 327-329. 

Illingworth, Rev. J. R., 171, 173. 

Impersonal, not a predicate of Christ’s 
humanity, 93, 94. 

In His steps, 307. 

Incarnation, the dominating idea of the 
New Testament, 185 sgg., 282; the 
Person of the Son and the Spirit re- 
vealed in relation with, 181, 182, 
185, 203; shapes the salutations of 
all the Epistles, 189 sgg., 282. 

Indifference, to sin, 303; to missions, 
304; to goodness, 305, 306. 

Innocent II., 381. 

Trenzeus, St, 343-345. 


JOHN, St, words ‘‘ Father” and ‘‘ Son” 
not found in opening verses of, 185. 

Jowett, Professor, 386-389. 

Juridical imagery as to atonement 
misleading, 80. 

Justice, human, inherently imperfect, 
9, 77> 

Justification, 335 ; Abzelard on, 375. 


LADYLIKE, 258. 

Laying on of hands, 261-264. 

Lightfoot, Bishop, 326, 327. 

Logos, the, 186, 193, 209-214; ante- 
cedent relation to humanity, 344, 
349, 351, 3523 inherent realization 
in humanity, 355, 358-363. 

Love, in what sense man possesses it, 
245 sgqg.; perfected only in the Spirit 
of Christ, 246; through the method 
of sacrifice, 248; the spring of peni- 


416 


Love—continued. 
tence, 28; the clue to forgiveness, 
64; the climax of forgiveness, 61, 
71, 73, 279. 

‘** Loving” and ‘‘ being in love with,” 
136, 146 sgg. 

Luther, 342, 391, 396. 


MARCELLUs of Ancyra, 208 sq. 

Martyrdom, in a sense, self-chosen, 114. 

Mason, Dr, 264. 

Maurice, Rev. F. D., 383-386. 

Metaphor, as applied to spiritual terms, 
183, 339-342; the words Father, 
Son, and Spirit, in what sense a, 
184, 346. 

Milligan, Dr, 195. 

Mirror of Deity, perfect humanity a, 
252-254. 

Missions, indifference to, 304. 

Monastic obedience, its untruth, 230; 
its strength and beauty, 232. 

Moral theory, 143, 388, 390. 

Mother, illustration of a, 80, 122. 

Murderer, a word of past or present 
meaning? 37. 

Music, 175, 282. 

Mutuality, the most intelligible element 
in Tri-Personal consciousness, 166. 
My God, My God, why hast Thou 

forsaken Me? 131, 134; Mr Maurice 

on, 386; Dr Dale on, 392; Dr 

Macleod Campbell on, 407-409. 
Mysticism, 311-316. 


NESTORIANISM, 93, 96. 
Newman’s Arians, quoted, 84. 
Non-communicant Christianity, 300-302. 


OBEDIENCE, to God and to men, 102, 
103, 229-231 ; not a breaking of the 
will, 229 ; false conception of, 229, 
230; the truth of, 228, 232, 257; 
Christ’s death the climax of, 114, 
116, 

Objective Atonement, 140 sgqg., 281, 
319, 321. 

Origen, 345-348. 

Oxenham, H. N., the Catholic doctrine 
of the Atonement, 343, 344. 





INDEX 


PARADISE, St Paul and, 320. 

Past, the, a form of present, 33; can it 
be undone? 35-41, 47. 

Penitence, is never realized in experi- 
ence, 2, 22, 3I, 39, 403 save in and 
through Christ, 284; is the great 
reality of experience, 44, 284; what 
it really is,—its identification with 
the Spirit of Holiness, 38, 39, 41, 43, 
45, 46, 117, 278; in its perfectness 
impossible to the sinful, 42 ; possible 
only to the perfectly sinless, 43, 117, 
279; aS sorrow, 27, 28; as love, 
28; as faith, 29; its atoning quality, 
37, 38 599-5 41, 43, 130, 397-402; 
vicarious, 75, 76, 80, 118; vicarious, 
of deeper capacity than personal, 
121-124; consummated in the death 
of Christ, 129, 283. 

Penitent thief, the, 29, 239, 290. 

Pentecost, indispensable for apprehen- 
sion of atonement, I5I-I53, 321, 
322, 382, 394, 409. 

Pentecostal Church, the, 45, 91, 272, 
275, 281, 285, 409. 

Person, value of the word as applied to 
** Persons” of Deity, 159 s¢¢. 

Persons of the Trinity mutually in- 
separable, 158, 167-169. 

Personality, punishment only explicable 
in terms of, 6; and penitence, 26; 
and forgiveness, 50; is affected by 
sin, 32; the seat of the real problem 
of atonement, 150; not isolated, nor 
to be defined by exclusiveness, 120, 
157, 252; intelligible only in ex- 
perience, 161; relation between ex- 
perience of human and idea of 
Divine, 161; the place of ‘‘re- 
sponse” in the total of, 174-176; 
what is it? 153, 219; realized only 
in the indwelling Spirit of Christ, 

248, 250, 252-254, 275, 284, 297, 
322; not equally real in the evil and 
in the holy, 225, 251; as humanly 
revealed in Christ, a total dependence 
on God, 193, 256; a Christian for: 
mula for, 255. 

Personality of God, 177-179. 

Personality of the Holy Spirit, difficult 


INDEX 


Personality—continued, 
to human understanding, 176; the 
difficulty no bar to understanding 
Him as gift or response, 180; but 
this to be transcended, 181. 

Philosophical, dependent upon spiritual 
insight, 242-244. 

Prayer, in Christ, 101 ; in the Christian, 
256. 

Present, the future a form of, 33, the 
past a form of, 33. 

Punishment, Dr Dale on, 4; Dr 
Macleod Campbell on, 397, 398; 
only applies to personality, 6; 
human, inflicted with a view to 
society, 9}; represents penitential 
discipline, 11, 17; its real end, 
penitence, 13, 19 sgg., 131, 278; 
self-acting in its higher realities, 15, 
283; approximate definition of, 12, 
22, 23; atoning only in proportion 
as it becomes penitence, 23, 30, 36, 
278. 


RANSOM, 334, 339- 

Reason, the meaning of, 233 sgg.; not 
individualistic, 235; a hierarchy of 
reasonable truths, 236; of which the 
most complex are the deepest, 237 ; 
moral and spiritual, 238; in its 
climax coalesces with will and love, 
240, 245; natural changed into 
spiritual through sacrifice, 241-244 ; 
perfected only in the Spirit of Christ, 


244. 

Reason and Religion, 237. 

Rebaptismate, de, 264. 

“* Recapitulatio,” 344, 345, 402. 

Reconciliation, 334, 342, 394. 

Redemption, 334, 338, 340. 

Reflection of God is human perfectness, 
94, 107, 193, 256. 

Regeneration, 261, 263, 410. 

Relation of Confirmation to Baptism, 
263, 264. 

Remorse, 36. 

Representative, Christ the true, 283. 

Response, an element in the total of 
personality, 174, 175, 203; capacity 
of 47, 226, 252, 254. 





417 


SABELLIANISM, suspicion of, 85, 86, 
165; in Marcellus, 210. 

Sacramental system, the, 91, 258; 
means Christ, 258, 261, 285. 

Sacramental materialism, 275. 

Sacrifice, the condition of freedom of 
will, 227, 228 ; and of the crowning of 
reason, 241, 242; and of the crown- 
ing of love, 248. 

Sacrifice, the, of Christ, 333, 334, 338, 
387, 389; as an example, 149; as 
an object of love, 114, 150, 376-381. 

Sacrilege of crushing human will, 229. 

Saints, consciousness of, 316 sqg. 

Salutations of the epistles wholly shaped 
by the fact of Incarnation, 189 sgg. 

Sanday, Dr, 198. 

Simon, son of John, 136. 

Sin, affects the personality, 32. 

Son, in what sense a word of metaphor, 
184; its primary reference to the 
Incarnate, 185 sgg., 208-215. 

Spirit, the Holy, 46, 152; revealed as 
continuance of the presence of the 
Incarnate, 156, 169, 181; is to us 
therefore primarily the Spirit of the 
Christ, 194-197, 203; and so con- 
stitutes the Church of Christ, 254, 
264, 272, 281, 285; as a’rd and as 
Adrds, 177; Personality of, difficult 
to human understanding, 176; but 
we do well to understand Him as 
gift or response, 180 ; which, really, 
zs Personal, 181, 282; is the con- 
summation in us of free will, 233 ; of 
reason, 244; of love, 246; of our- 
selves, 204, 248-255, 275, 282 320, 
345, 360; the undiscerned work of, 
in the Church, 290-294. 

Spiritualism, 310. 

Stephen, St, 68. 

Subjective atonement, 141 sgg., 281, 
284, 319, 321. 

Substitution, 386, 387, 393, 401. 


THIEF, the penitent, 29, 239, 290. 

Transactional theory of atonement, 
138, 218, 278, 371, 386, 410. 

Trinitate, de, St Augustine, 160, 171, 
206 ; Vigilius Tapsensis, 193. 


2D 


418 INDEX 


Trinity, the Persons of, mutually in- 
separable, 158, 167-169; danger of 
distinguishing them as qualities, 172, 
206 ; analogies of, 170-176. 

Tri-personal, not properly intelligible 
to uni-personal consciousness, 161, 
173. 

Tri-theism, 84, 156. 


UNFORGIVING servant, the, 62. 
Unity of God, 83, 154; not the unity 
of singularity or distinctiveness, 166. 


VALENTINIANS, 164. 


‘ 





Vengeance not atoning, but the reverse, 
18, 24, 132, 401. 

Vicarious, penitence, 75, 76, 80, 118, 
283 ; deeper in capacity than personal 
penitence, 121-124; penalty, 78, 79 ; 
punishment, 278, 283. 

Vigilius Tapsensis, 193. 


WILL, see Free will. 

Wilson, Archdeacon, 410, 411. 
Woman, the, which wasa sinner, 28, 
Wrath, the, of Jesus, 304, 





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